New Seattle-based 97 Impreza Wagon Team - Plan Review + Cage Recs?

For the cage, my 3 yen would be to do the custom option. The pre-made kits they list are not as reliable. So its better to measure the cage using their nifty template, and send it it. Same cost, just makes the fitment better. The seat must be in, fitter, etc... cause the cage is fitted around the seat and tight to the body of the car. SWI also another option.
Interior needs to be gone. if its flamable, needs to go. I keep the door panels, dash, hvac in my race cars if I make it from scratch.
Most oem seats are too high to be in race car, due to helmet and bigger head. lower profile sliders always nice. Lower better, just need to see out the top of the steering wheel.
For kill switch, dont forget dump load resistor, and use 4 or 6 pole type. Carter is nice.

We are running a 96 impreza coupe.

The cage is basically if you can't weld it yourself find someone to install a prebent cage or a custom builder.

People say front bearings fail when racing on subies.  I replaced ours on principle and they've been OK.

The stock oil pan sucks if you can corner.  (Stock suspension and shit tires it might not matter) we blew our first engine oil starving in a corner.  The 2006+ oil pan and pickup is much better for oiling in corners.

Not required but brake upgrade is sooo easy cause subarus are legos.  2002+ rs brakes are a little bigger, and wrx brakes are bigger still and can be gotten cheap.  We run wrx brakes with track pads and brakes are stupid good.  The gc chassis is much lighter.

Hooray for more pnw teams. Send head gasket.

Get the seat in before the cage, but wait until the end to order your fire bottle and harness, that way if, er, when the build takes longer than you plan for they won't be expired when you go to race. If you want an expired set of belts to mock stuff up, I have a set that just went out of date.

Advance auto fab in Spokane does very quick turnarounds for fire bottle recertifications, for when you realize the week of the race that your bottle is expired (I know all about this, they did next day shipping to Olympia and saved our race). They do lifeline systems, they may also do Spa bottles, but it's worth calling them and asking.

Thank you all for some great advice! We clearly got the cage-seat-helmet install out of order, and given the height differences in the driving team, that will be where we start first.

Do folks in the greater Seattle area have a preferred or recommended race shop for helmets and seats? Since I have only borrowed helmets in the past, I have zero recollection of sizing by brand.

for my 2 cents I would also do the brakes (rotors and pads) wheel bearings and axels, these are items on front wheel drive and AWD cars that need replacing pretty often when ra king and better to do them and no have to do them at the track when everyone else is racing and glory is on the line. also if you have 250k a fuel filter is not a bad idea and replacing timing hardware (belt/chain etc)

We've been poking around and perhaps unsurprisingly, finding someone to build a cage is gonna be difficult. The recommendations here are booking out a year or more.

We've got a single extra referral from all of the calling around we've done, but leads seem thin. Has anyone else here worked with anyone aside from Chase Race in Seattle, or happen to have Portland recommendations? We can trailer the thing south if needed, but would really prefer to run sometime before next year.

If you are ordering a prebent cage and having it installed (instead of a custom cage builder who does the bending inbhouse) be warned that these are usually "bent to order" and can have a significant wait time before they ship out.

I forget the exact timeline but we ordered from I think "roll cage customs" and where quoted some long time but where told if we paid a "bump fee" (which was several hundred iirc) it would ship that week.  Well it still took like a month to ship I think even woth the rush fee.  Once the cage arrives there is still a ton of notching and cutting to do so install takes longer than you might expect.

I just got the 12 week reminder for pacific, yall might be in trouble getting a cage done in time... so yeah probably gotta start looking further away for builder/installer.