The devil is in the details... GC goodness inside

[sheepdog]

So, this is the thread I'm starting for the origins and build of my current GC I just finished I'm going to go into a lot of detail, so be prepared for me to talk a lot and have lots of pictures.

Here's the finished pics to whet your appetite, and the table of contents will go here eventually as well.




Table of contents:

Post #2 -- White car/red car disassembly
Post #3 -- Unibody prep/paint/bedliner
Post #5 -- Drivetrain in/Doors/HVAC
Post #12 -- Paint/bedliner batch 2, Wiring harness in
Post #14 -- More HVAC talk, radiator stuff
Post #17 -- Flocking, Suede, Alarm
Post #18 -- Tons of current pics as of 5/2/09
Post #34 -- Link to my Flocking DIY
Post #98 -- Ice Racing Pictures

Mods list:

Chassis
-- 1995 Impreza L 2.2l AWD 5 speed unibody
-- Matte Khaki Beige paint, Matte clear
-- 3M undercoat top to bottom
-- Bedlined wheelwells, trunk insides, and bottom floorpans
-- RS front end conversion w/ aluminum hood
-- Black housing headlights
-- JDM power folding mirrors
-- Door guard strips shaved
-- JDM tails
-- Flat fuel door

Engine
-- 2005 WRX EJ20
-- WRX radiator
-- 5 speed, drivetrain from the same car
-- WRX fuel tank
-- Megan Racing catback, flat-blacked

Suspension
-- 05' WRX subframe/suspension/brakes swap
-- SS brake lines
-- Tein Flex Coilovers w/ EDFC
-- Tein front and rear strut bars


Interior
-- 05' WRX dash swap w/ functioning auto climate control
-- STi seats front and rear
-- bedlined black door sill trim
-- Flocked dash, center console, pillars, and other trim
-- Plasti-dipped silver center console pieces
-- Blue suede headliner
-- RS door panels, dyed black and blue suede inserts
-- New black carpet
-- Way overkill security system
-- Some Clarion double din head unit that looked good lol

Remaining Money to be thrown at it:
-- JDM rear glass w/ wiper
-- Brembos
-- Power adders for the motor
-- Wheels powdercoated
-- 6-speed (someday )

[sheepdog]

Hey guys, so I guess this will be the thread documenting the build of my swapped GC. Well, both of them I suppose, but the second go around in more detail.

So basically, I started with a white 1993 Impreza L sedan, with a 5 speed. I came to find out later the car had previously been in a rear end crash and wasn't 100% perfect back there anymore. ECS did an 05' WRX dash and drivetrain swap for me on this car, but the interior was still crappy and tan minus the dash, which had no radio, no hvac, and the door panels didn't fit so my window controller hung out of a bare door. Also no power door locks.

Fast forward to me driving this car and a lady hitting me and totaling it in March of 08'. I fought with State Farm about how much it was worth, and ended up getting my settlement and the car back in August. I decided to use the entire settlement to both rebuild the car, and since I was going to do ALL of the labor myself, support myself for the period after I graduated college and was finishing it.

First step was to start disassembling the old white car. I wasn’t sure how much I was going to be able to salvage. She had basically taken the front drivers side corner off of the car, and pushed the radiator and fans into the motor and belts. I figured once I got everything apart, it would make it all a lot easier. So that’s what I did, being uber organized about taking pictures and labeling harness plugs and stuff. As I took everything apart I realized that the motor looked fine minus those timing gear covers, and so did the front subframe. So I was happy. The motor and trans were the last things to come out of the car (along with the front subframe obviously) for space purposes. I was working with a 2 car garage to hold the parts from 2 cars while I painted and everything. So room was at a premium, and the motor/trans got a last out/first in treatment.



Unfortunately I discovered that the unibody was kinked at the strut towers on both sides of the car. I had already found another sedan just in case, and it was definitely going to be cheaper to re-swap everything into another car than it was to fix the one I had. It was a tough decision to make, to get rid of the white car which had treated me so well, but it was time. So we did what we thought it would have wanted to be, a convertible. I did consider putting the guts from the 2.2l L which I had got as the unibody donor back into the white car, but it's structural integrity had obviously been seriously compromised and I didn't have the time, money, or motivation to tube it out as much as it would have needed. As you can see though, I took pretty much everything off with the intention of using the best example of anything I ended up with 2 of.



Then the red car came into the picture. It was a 1995 Impreza L 2.2l sedan with a 5 speed. It leaked from anything you put fluid in, and I thought I was going to get robbed buying it in the area of Denver I went to to get it. The interior could have been worse, but the tint was bubbling and horrible. I drove it for maybe a week, and then once the white car was gone to the junkyard, the red one came in and was stripped. This time though, I didn't need to remember how it went together. These parts went out of my way as quick as possible, as I already had wiring harnesses hanging on the walls and all kinds of other stuff piled up everywhere. I ended up trashing way more of the stuff from the red car than I was expecting. Anyways, here's that car getting a wash out front, stripped.



I took the opportunity which I had of having this car all the way down to the bare unibody metal to go a little wild with my attention to detail. This was something I needed to be a priority while doing this whole thing myself, so I figured I'd better start with a good base. I had learned that lesson with the white car. If you wanted it to be perfect and exactly the way you want it, you'd better do it or check it yourself. So I checked the body out, and it looked clean. Sanded it all top to bottom, including wheel wells, interior, bottom of the car, engine bay, everywhere. I also was going to have to paint in batches for space purposes, so the unibody itself was the priority paint wise so I could get the mechanical guts back in it to have room to paint all the other stuff. Here's a shot of the red chassis about to get paint:

[sheepdog]

So then came paint. I had tossed around many ideas in terms of color and paint scheme for the past several months, and needed to make a decision. I had entertained everything from keeping the panda love, to a winter camouflage. I decided upon the matte khaki beige though, which everyone was skeptical of when I said it. Regardless, the decision was made and khaki began to be laid, after primer of course. It was then followed by a matte clear. I also was super anal about all my masking lines, they had to be perfect even where they wouldn't be seen. I addressed any problem areas on the body, and sprayed undercoat all the way up to the very edge of where you would see khaki on the exterior panel. So for example, the rain gutters are undercoated black underneath the trim strips in the picture after this one.



I had also in my many months of contemplation decided I was going to take the plunge and experiment with some bedliner. So I got some which I had researched to be legit and had it on hand when the khaki was done. I masked the roof and ABC quarter piece (The only exterior parts of the bare unibody you'll see when the car is assembled) and went at it. I sprayed a rubberized undercoat everywhere I saw red. I even got the inside of the roof and underside of the rear window tray in the trunk.

I then started the bedliner. I did a couple test things and it came out great. So I began to contemplate where all I wanted this stuff, since I had gotten plenty. I then realized the answer was right in front of me: I should put it everywhere! Just kidding. But I did do the entire exterior floorpans of the car, the wheelwells all the way to the strut tops on the inside, the tow hooks and such, and the sideskirts from the OEM orange peel down. I also decided to ditch my trunk floor panel and just bedline in there as well. This stuff was messy and I did have some issues with letting it cure too long over my masking tape. You can see the spray undercoat has a smoother, flatter texture than the bedliner, which is coarser and a little glossier. I got it all worked out though. This was the finished product after I finished my work on the main chassis:



The bedliner was perfect when it cured, it's so durable it's outrageous. And sticks to everything, including my arms for over a week. Shot of one front wheel well, the insides of the front fenders were done after they were rolled to match.



And one from the back, showing more of my masking lines.



Here's a shot from the bedlined trunk into the main compartment. I bedlined up to the dropoff in front of the rear seat bottom, so that if I want I can pop that out and let the dog come places without messing up my suedes!



Then I needed the WRX motor, trans, gas tank, and subframes to go in to free up space on the other side of the garage. So that's what I did. These were all from the 05' WRX donor car which had been swapped to the white car. So WRX gas tank, rear subframe/diff, front subframe, engine and trans went in, in that order. No issues really at this point, except that I was super intimidated by all of the charcoal cannister stuff and getting the fuel lines all hooked up right. I've decided I don't like messing with the fuel/emissions system lol.

I apparently got it all hooked up right though, since the car ran fine the first startup. This is all of that stuff in, but you can still see all the trim and panels are missing, wiring harnesses on the wall, etc. It was a unibody with a drivetrain.

[brdrhopper]

looking/looks great man, cant wait to see the rest of this story unfold and watch how it came into its current state

[sheepdog]

The next step was to get more stuff out of the way. So I began weaving the wiring harness back through the car. Before I did that though, I pulled apart a lot of the harness where ECS had used crimp connectors and soldered them, and re-loomed the whole harness. I also ditched most of the OEM harness fasteners, mostly because I had broken half of them. I used zipties and it worked just as great if not better than what subaru did.

Once that was well under way, I pulled my modified WRX dash bar out, and noticed it was rusting. So I sprayed it black with the undercoat. When I installed that, I realized I hadn't done anything about my HVAC yet. So dash bar came out, and my hvac box got my full attention for the first time. ECS had told me my hvac worked, but when I took delivery of the car, it obviously didn't, not correctly at least. Basically it always blew hot air out of all the cracks in the dash and none of the holes. No matter what setting if it was on it did that. So I wanted that shit to work.

As I looked at the modifications they had done to the box, and how the box worked itself, I realized there was a rather large hole dremeled in a section which needed to seal. The footwell nozzles were missing totally. I made the repairs as best as I could tell was required to regain functionality, and made a few seal improvements along the way as well, gambling that this would solve the issue. I also cut the holes in the firewall needed for the WRX auto climate control box to run the heater and AC lines out to the engine bay. (PS, I'll talk more about this later but the auto climate control works like a charm now.)

So, dash bar, hvac, wiring harness, fuel filler neck, etc was in, and I was about out of stuff I could do without doing either my next batch of bedliner stuff and khaki, or my interior flocking. I figured paint dust would be teh uber bad for flocking, so I went with paint batch #2 next.

One of the first steps of this process was picking the best 4 doors I had, stripping them totally, and welding up the holes behind those horrible door guard strips. Then grinding/bondoing/painting the doors ensued.




So, after the doors were welded and bondoed, they got painted along with all the other exterior panels, on which I kept the undercoat all the way up to the outside edge to match the inside door jams and such you can see in a previous picture. Re-assembling the doors was a pain in the ass. I also discovered in disassembling all 8 doors I ended up with that the white car did have power door lock actuators in the 3 passenger doors, and the drivers door module looked different but also had a harness connector. We found out later after blowing a fuse several times on the door lock relay for the alarm system that the drivers side was just a sensor, to lock the other 3 when you lock the car, but there was no interior door lock controls. Am I the only one who thinks this is pointless? I'm jumping ahead of myself here, because I didn't actually figure this out until my buddy was out here installing the alarm system weeks after I reassembled the doors. Anyways, an aftermarket door lock actuator was installed on the drivers door to fix the problem.

After the locks and door handles, the window stuff had to go in. I had decided on the black door handles btw, I had a set of painted handles and a set of blacks. If I decide to change them I can, but I doubt I ever will after discovering how much of a pain it was to get to them after the glass is in. In addition to the fact that I like them black, now that the door guard strips are gone.

The glass was interesting for sure. I cleaned the little felt guides which are the culprit for the scratches on the glass, and used the pieces of glass I had which had the least scratches. I'm still playing with the window adjustment to get it 100% perfect, but they roll up and down no issue. Also at this point, I ran some 12 gauge wire through the door harness when I was re-looming it, for the DEI 530T modules which I was going to run to control the windows and have one -touch switches.

[seanrob]

nice, subscribed!
so you didn't have any problems pulling the tape off the khaki after spraying the bedliner?? looks like that might be a really good idea

[rbimdxe]

Wow. Looking fantastic. Can't wait to see more of this write-up. Good on you for doing it all yourself as well. Eagerly awaiting more installments

[legacy2003]

Your attention to detail is incredible. I am VERY impressed. And finally someone does a truly unique color on a GC. The bedliner seems like a really good idea to prevent rust. The interior is very clean as well.

[JaeILV2]

<--- very jealous of the interior.

[blackturbo]

DAMN this beast is crazyyyyy.