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2001 Impreza L | WRX swapped | Rust repairs and weight reduction!

189K views 1K replies 66 participants last post by  bue car 
#1 · (Edited)
This is mostly the progress of my srp 2001 L coupe, but also some 98L and 2018 brz stuff.



Backstory:


I got the car in August 2011 with 100,500 miles. It was my first car, and it had lots of problems at the start. Almost sold it a few times, but once I read about all the swap stuff, I decided I had to keep it.

I messed with weight reduction, and fixing/upgrading the suspension while I gathered funds for the swap...lots of maintenance too...although the ej22 ran strong the whole time. It really was bulletproof. I had to have the transmission rebuilt, but was finally was able to start the swap summer 2014 and I got an ej205 in and running.

Fall of 2015 it was totaled (not my fault) and I spent a year slowly fixing the car myself with no collision experience. After tons of spot welds, test fits, wiring, and double checking......I got the car inspected and legal to drive again in November 2016, with a reconstructed title.

2017 and on will be dedicated to rust repairs,weight reduction, and self tuning.




Here are some up to date pictures, regardless of the different seasons:

















The goods:


ENGINE:


-USDM 02/03 ej205 (6/28/14)

-TGV deletes

-Grimmspeed catless uppipe, ceramic coated

-Cobb catted downpipe, ceramic coated

-02-05 wrx, Invidia q300 catback

-STi oil pan

-KillerB oil pick-up tube

-Avo turbo inlet

-lighter crank pulley, and no p/s or a/c pulleys

-Protune by Jermaine @TurboXS

-v3 accessport

-iWire merged harness



TRANSMISSION:


-'01 5mt (3.9) and cable clutch;
AndrewTech rebuild

-custom reinforced clutch fork

-'01 (oem) TOB, and pivot ball

-'06+ wrx clutch

-'06+ wrx pressure plate

-'06+ wrx flywheel

-TiC shifter linkage update and pivot bushings



SUSPENSION / HANDLING


-KYB excel-g struts (2/2/14)

-Eibach pro-kit springs 2/2/14)

-Group N front top hats (2/2/14)

-3/8 saggy butt spacers (2/2/14)

-18mm Outback rear sway bar

-20mm WRX wagon front sway bar (6/28/14)

-JDM GC8 crossmember (6/28/14)

-Whiteline steering rack bushings (6/28/14)

-Whiteline rear endlink bushings

-group N front-of-trailing arm bushings

-power steering delete



WEIGHT REDUCTION&DISTRIBUTION:


-Currently about 2690~ lbs.
-***Was at 2590, but the turbo engine swap and a full-size spare added well over 100 lbs back.

-Aluminum jdm gc8 hood

-USDM front bumper beam cut in half

-deleted a/c

-deleted power steering

-washer fluid tank relocated to trunk

-battery relocated to back seat

-removed hunk of metal from glovebox and under dash

-removed most sound deadening

-stripped trunk besides spare

-lighter wheels

-removed keyless entry system

-random little things. More soon.



----------



Here's the progress from the beginning mostly in order. I'm going to add in some dates/mileage later on. Bear with the potato pictures for the first few pages. I eventually got a digital camera, and now a DSLR, so the pictures get progressively better in quality.







Warning, picture heavy:







-Bought late August of 2011, bone stock.















--some actual wheels to replace the steelies and decent tires too.







16x7 with 205/50-16 Conti DW















--This is the oldest pic I have of my car, and the only pic from the beach driving I have left.























--Rally armors, which get used on a daily basis on PA's crazy roads :unamused:























--Homemade light bar that mounts 2 hella 500's























How it looked last winter:























--Polyurethane rear end link bushings







This is when I learned how hard pressing bushings is.....















--New outer tie rods, ball joints, and front wheel bearings.







This is when I learned to hate wheel bearings and ball joints......















This is a ball joint removal tool......mine were really stuck.















j
 
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#227 ·
Made some decent progress this weekend, more on that soon......but first I just wanted to share something I found on the car yesterday. :lol:

So I've been fighting off animals/bugs ever since the car has been sitting. In particular, the damaged corner had a new spider web every day. Even with all the taking things off, painting, welding, ect.....a new web was always there.

I could never find the actual spider.....but I found the 100's of babies it had! I'm hoping I killed them all....or else the car will be infested. I'm going to bug bomb the car VERY soon. :lol:







 
#233 ·
that was my first thought, "damn, after all this now I have to burn the car down." :lol:

I hate spiders. I'd rather it be a giant bees nest, or even a bunch of snakes.

Cute little babies!
maybe devil babies

:lol: :lol:


(Brake Cleaner + Lighter)
I have a can of brake cleaner sitting around just to kill spiders with. :lol:

...but they were set on fire about 3 seconds after I took the pictures. With the fender liners out and no undercoating yet, there's not much to accidently burn.

Yea my cars all have brown widows taking over. I like to squish them
I prefer fire, but not the smell of burning spider.
 
#234 · (Edited)
Wildlife problems aside....I finally got the headlight panel welded in, which pretty much wraps up the main damage repairs. It's been raining all the time again, so I set up 2 canopy's to work in the rain. Forgot to get pictures of the panel, but it's the one circled below:





I'm considering leaving the upper tie bar bolted in, not welded in. For many reasons. If I do, I might also drill the 2-3 welds for the vertical hood latch bar and have them both bolted in.

They are highlighted in red below. Both are so flimsy that they don't add much of any stiffness or protection to the front end, but still not sure yet.



So here's the exterior about 95% fixed (besides paint).

Theres still some adjusting to do, but the gaps are really close now. I rattle-canned the new fender to see the whole car atleast a shade of red. Definitely not a perfect match, but it's sooo nice to see all the panels red with no damage again.

Full paint, fog covers, and other stuff will come later.





Finally sending the Impreza's Accessport off to be fixed. The screen has been cracked for almost 2 years now.

 
#237 ·
Any votes for a different color than red for the engine bay? I just can't decide on a color. Might do the underside of the hood the same color as the bay too...not sure.

If I stay with red it won't be actual Sedona Red pearl, because it's waaaayyy to expensive and much harder to get. ONE rattle can of real SRP costs $50 at the local paint store. So it would be some other shade of red.

Not sure if I would want it a darker red, or brighter either.

But maybe black? Or gunmetal? White would get too dirty...
 
#240 ·
It's just gonna be out of an aerosol can. So no mixing flakes and stuff.

Really considering the dark metallic gray/gunmetal though. Black is too dark, and my gutted trunk is already a gunmetal-ish color, so it'll match.


Hmm $20 a can isn't too bad. I wish I saw that before....the auto paint mixing stores near me all wanted atleast $40 a can.

I was just trying to do this today and tomorrow, so ordering paint will delay things another week. Not looking for a perfectly painted bay....just want to get it painted finally so I can start putting everything back together.
 
#241 ·
Went with the dark gray metallic/gunmetal color. I was deciding between that, black, or red for a while. I can always change it up.....I plan to re-do a bunch of wiring, brakes lines, and weld some holes on firewall closed next year anyway.

So here's how it looks so far. Still have some spots to touch up, more color, then clear to do.
It's BY FAR not a perfectly smooth, shaved bay. That was never the plan. I just wanted to seal up and paint my repairs to prevent rust. It's smoothed out more than before, but it's no work of art.



It's lighter in the sunlight. I'll roll the car out from the canopy this week to get some better pictures.
 
#243 ·
Here's a few more things from the past couple weeks. Stupid weather delaying things like always. It was crazy humid, so I was doing most stuff at night.



First off.....those baby spiders I posted about ended up being black widows. I found the momma spider one night and nearly burned the car down when I saw the red spot and realized what it was.

So I immediately went out and bought some bug bombs. I put 1 can inside the car, and rolled 2 underneath. :lol: I'll probably do it 1 or 2 more times to make sure they're all dead.




As far as the front end goes:

100% welded up
100% sealed up with seam sealer/epoxy
100% primed all bare metal/new panels
90% painted

As you can see I left lots of things in the engine bay, and just taped them off. I was way too lazy to remove the brake lines and pull all the wiring inside the car. I also gave up on removing the stupid wiper motor.

It would've been pointless to make the engine bay perfect anyway....it'll be dirty/dusty most of the time, and I'll probably drop tools, parts, and oil all over and slowly mess it up.









Also got the accessport back. Very quick turn around time. Yay for no more cracked screen.

 
#248 ·
Yea it'll be nice to see no rusty spots and a change of color under the hood. Also glad the battery tray is gone no more sockets and bolts get dropped into it.

Dark bay came out pretty decent though
It looks phenomenal all painted up again!
I'll have to wait until the engine is back in and it's all in better light to see how I really like it, but I think it'll look ok. The dark bay should at least go well with the small red and black theme the car has going.

At least until the black exterior trim and mirrors are the same color as the car.

No good on the black widows!!
Damn that's crazy they were black widows.
Generally webs that go from an object to the ground are going to be widows. I get a lot of them in my yard and on my vehicles if they sit for too long. Serves me right for living next to one of the last slices of actual nature in west LA.
Yea, definitely not something I had in my repair plans.

I saw the actual black spider with the classic red spot in the same area I found the babies....but figured it wasn't related since the babies were brown/orange.

The webs and odd behavior matched up.....then I googled "baby black widows" and found pictures almost identical to the ones I posted here. It was really hard to not set the car on fire at that point. :lol:
 
#250 ·
:lol: Yea, I'm definitely not a fan of the widows.....but I think I'd rather it be black widows than brown recluses. Recluses are supposed to be more aggressive.

I just hate spiders. Idk why. Anything else I'm fine with. I'll occasionally come home and find a snake on the front porch, and I'll just let it hang out until it wants to leave.

 
#252 ·
Finished painting the bay, which left lots of boring and repetitive stuff to do....that consisted of 4 main things:
-removing masking tape
-removing factory electrical tape
-re-routing wires
-re-taping wires

Here's just some of the masking tape I pulled off. Lots of fun. :lol: Also put the front back together, again.





Some before and after pictures of trying to clean up the mess of wires. Nothing special, just re-routed wires off to the sides, and ran new conduit for the battery relocation positive cable. Eventually I want to de-pin some connectors and remove all the unused wiring, move the fuse box, re-run other circuits, and get rid of some other things. I bet I could remove 10-15 lbs of wiring stuff if I really tore the harnesses apart.

-Before pics: (some are recent and some are old, it's just to show how messy it was)







-After pics:







So here's the engine bay about 95% back together. This is basically the same picture as the one above, but with the airbox in place (just for mock up) and some other things uncovered/installed. Once the engine is back in, and it's under better light it won't seem so dark.

The engine bay is ready for the engine to go back in, just gotta do the oil pan and exhaust stuff. Should be ordering those parts very soon. Thinking of doing the clutch cable, TOB and fork while I have the chance.

 
#258 ·
Thank you! It's sooooo nice to open the hood and not see stuff taped off, or primer color everywhere.

Hot damn! That black contrasts really well in the bay. Can't wait to see it with the lug sitting in it's home
Thank you! I think the red exterior color, the black/gray in the bay, and all the bare aluminum on the engine will go well together.

Firewall to fuse box wiring looks stellar.
Thank you! I need to re-run a some wires to eliminate a few splices, but yea it's much better than the rats nest it was before.

if we didnt know that it was in and accident, we would never be able to tell. amazing work. and the wiring.. :drool:
Thank you! Hopefully that's what the inspection place thinks when I go to get it legal again. It's $150 for the inspection, so I would like to pass the first time. Multiple attempts would get expensive quick. :lol:

what accident?
Exactly. ;)
 
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