[JO5HUA]

I did some stuff so... update

The air filter was making an annoying noise when the shroud would rub the fender so I took the shroud off and holy crap there was a lot of dirt in the filter, cleaned and oiled the filter and just left the shroud off

Then few weeks later the maf sensor crapped out, I thought that over oiling the filter may have fouled it but there wasn't a trace of anything in the tube and using maf cleaner did nothing. The motor kept starting and a few seconds later it would die, I figured it was the maf when I unplugged it and the motor ran fine but as soon as I plugged the maf back in it died again

A pretty good deal came up on another harness so I snagged it, the hans variant so it has 2" shoulder belts that I'm not too fond of but new 3" belts are $130 which means I'll deal with it as long as I can and then eventually buy them

After a long wait I got the cobb short shifter installed, I'm not going with recommended usage so the tunnel had to be modified

The flange on the shift rod that keeps that rubber seal in place is hitting the top of the tunnel so I had to back off just a hair until it cleared, I'm going to go back and cut that flange off to get the extra clearance to make shifts even shorter still

For now the rubber seal is just kind of resting in place, I used a little bit of quick roof to seal it and keep it from interfering with operation it's by no means a perfect solution

The shift throw from 3-4 is a hair over 3 inches, totally manageable and pretty damn good for having a 6" extension under the shift knob

Somewhere in time I put the double din screen back in and looking closely there's a hint of the latest mod

I scored a red stitched brake handle off ebay for only $23 shipped and it is in pretty damn decent shape, the 02-03 wrx is what it came out of but fitment is the same as 98-01

There's very little left that I would like to do to the interior, next mods are flocking the dash, fitting the triple gauge pod and installing gauges. The turbo swap has been long overdue but I'm moving into a house with a nice, large 2 car garage before summer so it's going to happen soon

 

[bue car]

Why not build a bracket from the intake to the rail, minimize the vibrations, which can also kill your maf.

 

[ClassicOBS]

Yeah, I was gonna say, vibration is probably what killed your maf, not the oil...

 

[10MM]

Awesome car!!! You have gotta be enjoying the rear wiper action!

Question though, I am working on custom mounting brackets for 6x9 speakers to go on the rear deck. Do the speakers that you have on your rear deck utilize the OEM mounting locations? My rear deck is also messed up from previous owners doing who knows what back there so I am not really sure what is a OEM hole or not.

Thanks in advance!

 

[JO5HUA]

The maf was held in place with a strip of metal but when I zip tied the tube to the fuel rail is where I went wrong, thinking about it now it was surely all the vibrations

I dusted off my glowshift pod to start thinking about gauges again, with just the glamshell lid off fitment is horrible

Clearly some work needs to be done to get it sitting flush, starting with cutting the vents off of the rest of the pocket

Now it is sitting much better to begin with and I can tell where I need to work down the fiberglass

I removed a lot of material from the back before working on the face

Trying to reduce the curve above the vents I got the corners pretty hard, almost to the point that I was breaking all the way through

The curve is still noticeable so I will probably fill it but fitment it much better now and almost ready for flocking, the gauges I chose are VDO cockpit white

Turned my attention to other things before I work on the gauges any more, whiteline mounts back in with the appropriate bushings this time but still on the stock endlinks for now

Since being rearended twice I've had the idea for a while to do something about being more noticeable during braking, 3 totaled subarus is too many for my little heart to bear

The wiring is incredible simple especially if your harness is all opened up already from swapping it in from a wagon to do the rear wiper mod, the optional trigger for reverse lights I thought about using but I'm happy with just what I have done at this time

It says it can run up to 3 incandescent bulbs or 10 amps but I'm sticking with just the led strip, check the video and let me know what you think

third brake light flasher - YouTube

 

[bue car]

Interesting idea

 

[JO5HUA]

Now that I'm moved into my new house I can get some work done on this thing again, so much stuff is still in storage though and I'm basically working from the top down trying to organize everything

Rather than take the straight pipe with me I decided to trash the stock exhaust and just get it fitted for an impreza

All it needed was the hanger moved forward to the shorter wheelbase, downturn rides pretty low and I scrape it on some speedbumps but sound is mean

I grew tired of the cheap look of the accordion boot so I picked up a nice leather one from a forester, the trim itself sits way deeper on the forester and it hit my shift linkage so I had to swap the boot onto my impreza trim

The rearview mirror is really starting to irritate me, when I am making sharp turns it totally blocks my road view so I swapped it out for the SVX mirror which is a little shorter

It was a slight improvement but still obstructive so I took it off too and now I have no rearview mirror, I don't even miss it and have just adapted to only using side mirrors so I think it will just stay off

I got my wheels back from powdercoating today and the color isn't quite what I had in mind but I love it

The tires are just some cheap hankook optimos, not planning on doing anything but city driving with them so I think they will do just fine

It's hard to believe the wheels were in such bad condition looking at them now, the anthracite still looks good to me but bronze is just so pretty

New shoes deserve a wash and a wax, handwashing you get to know every little detail about your car and it was telling me that I really need to take better care of the paint

I still need to get the center caps painted for it to be perfect but I am very happy with the results

 

[Razor7]

Just read the whole thing,

you've got some great work that you've done. I'm jealous it's easier for you to find real tyte JDM **** from Canada near you.

But seriously though, where's the swap?! You're giving me blue balls. I'm starting to go down that path and want to read horror stories of everything people have dealt with.

-TC

 

[JO5HUA]

Just read the whole thing,

you've got some great work that you've done. I'm jealous it's easier for you to find real tyte JDM **** from Canada near you.

But seriously though, where's the swap?! You're giving me blue balls. I'm starting to go down that path and want to read horror stories of everything people have dealt with.

-TC

Yeah seriously, I keep thinking it's right around the corner but then well... life happens. I'm trying to avoid a horror story so I'm doing as much leg work as I can to make it as smooth as possible. I had to take care of my wife's car when her turbo seized and going through that process alerted me to a bunch of potential issues with my swap motor. For those that don't know my wife has a 2005 Forester XT, same as my donor car, link to journal on the fozzy forum

First I took all the EJ20 crap off the bottom of the motor, looking at the pickup tube I was pretty happy with it's condition

I went with the Killer B pickup and baffle hoping that it will prevent catastrophic failure in the future, the baffle needed to be replaced anyway so I could fit the STi pan

The tube is the same but the dipstick needs to be changed to STi to get accurate oil level, now I can fit better headers...

The banjo screens are the stupidest thing ever, the turbo side one is pretty easy to get and the bolts are marked with a little raised circle on the heads so finding the ones to check is pretty easy

I needed to do the timing belt anyway so it made sense to get the other screen out too, unfortunately it's near impossible to get to that bolt without taking off the cam gears and cover

You can clearly see the marking on the bolt head and that actually helps make it more difficult to remove with the timing belt cover in place, there's a tech bulletin about these screens but apparently most dealers neglect to remove them and it's probably because it is such a pain

The filters in my car weren't actually that bad, you can see how easy it would be for dirty oil to clog these and starve the avcs and turbo though

Contrasted against the screens from my wife's car they look amazingly clean, the cleaner of these two was the one on the turbo side and it killed the turbo

I didn't want to replace anything that was working fine to do the timing belt but the tensioner was definitely toast, a little oil near the piston is okay but oil all down the side like this is no good

The only pulley that was close to being saved was the little one but I ended up getting all new pulleys anyway, the water pump was fine so I left it alone and fit the Tomei kevlar belt on

 

[Flatfoot98H4]

needs more toast for kitchen upgrades! love the thread just read all of it. gives me ideas for formatting my thread. also the sound deadening removal is the actual cabin a lot louder now or only a little bit? been thinking about getting rd of it whilst i can take the carpet out. i noticed you pulled the bar the goes under the rear seat ? is there a reason for this just curious.

 

[bue car]

Looks good amigo

 

[JO5HUA]

needs more toast for kitchen upgrades! love the thread just read all of it. gives me ideas for formatting my thread. also the sound deadening removal is the actual cabin a lot louder now or only a little bit? been thinking about getting rd of it whilst i can take the carpet out. i noticed you pulled the bar the goes under the rear seat ? is there a reason for this just curious.

The bar under the seat is for side impact protection, not sure if it adds any chassis rigidity for performance but I put it back in after removing the sound deadening. Noise is increased more by taking the interior out than by stripping the sound deadening, with the seats and carpet in it's not much of a difference

Not much of a big update this time, did some stuff but mostly little things

Found out that the thread for gopro screws matches the foglight cover brackets, doesn't do a good job at isolating from vibration though

I still gotta get my center caps painted, used a paint marker on the lettering and I like the look

The cheap ebay strut bar got replaced with a Cusco type OS, it didn't come with decent hardware so the lower v bars stayed unmounted for a while

After a lot of measuring and double checking I drilled the mounting holes for the bracket, there's not a whole lot of room underneath so it has to be spot on

Took a while to figure out which way is forward on the bracket, it doesn't sit flush with the seam either way but I used a bunch of silicone to fill the gaps and keep water out

You can see how little room there is to work under there so it took a lot to get the nuts threaded by myself, looking back I should have just gotten somebody to help

All tightened up and the rear is so sharp now, I break traction a little easier but understeer is nearly gone.

With the name decals it is officially a racecar now! My daughter has been giving me directions to her school for a few weeks, not like stage rally notes but it's a start, and it makes her so happy seeing her name on the car

I was due for another oil change and the drips on the floor in my garage, big puddle under the power steering pump and foul burnt smells finally got to me. This is after I cleaned the motor off and I'm pretty sure there was power steering fluid in there mixed with a little bit of atf, I blew out all the fluid in the rack with the air gun and now it's a manual rack until swap time

 

[scampbell2x]

looking great! sub'd!

 

[JO5HUA]

I haven't really done much in a while, a few parts ordered and a few things broke

The replica lip for sport bumper showed up from Russian Federation, yeah it's supposed to be straighter than that

It's unfortunate that it wasn't packaged better but it is what it is, repair and paint are gonna have to happen

Rather than mess with the fitment with the bumper on the car I just swapped out the old bumper, front looks like ass now but winter mode I guess

Sport bumper needs some work anyway, the curb repair will be covered by the lip anyway but there are a lot of rock chips and the paint is peeling by the license plate

While I can't say anything good about the shipping the fitment is perfect, I was a little worried since replica parts but there is nothing to complain about in that department

The turn signal harness that came with the sport bumper had a different plug for the signal but another plug I assumed for the fog light, turns out the other plug fits the old bumper signal

Now both plugs are signal wires and I won't have to do any wiring when I put the sport bumper back on

After a while I felt like the grille and vents made the bumper look even worse so I swapped the old ones back in, it looks a little better I guess but I mostly just did it because I could

I was starting to hear the alternator belt slip on cold mornings and the tension was already maxed out on that belt so I put the old power steering pump back in and it really crapped out within a few weeks, went to the junkyard and got one from a 2000 RS and it seems identical except for the sensor wire coming out of it

When I was cleaning the atf off the underside of the motor I noticed a coolant leak on the lower radiator hose, fixed that and inspected some more but not a drop of oil anywhere under the heads so I wondered if this is actually the original motor with 220,000 miles on it... gold star for anybody that knows if it's original or not

 

[hail2theTheif]

Nice build! Sub'd for more!

 

[JO5HUA]

I know nothing about the evap system other than it filters the air displaced by adding fuel and mine is causing the fuel pump to click off prematurely, it has been a source of irritation for way too long and I finally got irritated enough to try and fix it

Everything is pretty well tucked under the box and there was a lot of dirt that came down in my face when I pulled the charcoal box down but the really frustrating part was the switch on the filler neck, it took a tiny wrench and a lot of patience to get it done without removing the filler pipe

I have no idea what these 3 valves and switches do but I went about replacing them to see if it fixed the problem anyway, there was no difference and it still clicked off at 1/2 tank so at least I tried and I don't care about it that much any more

The original wheels that I have been looking for, but are always overpriced when I find them, came up on croobs for super cheap and I couldn't pass on them

There's some light curbing on them but for Y5900 you don't get to be super picky, the set at my local importer was worse and they were stuck on $450 with tax

The worst damage is on the face of this one, it's light enough that you can't tell when it's pouring down rain which it never seems to stop this time of year I tried to get good pics but every day it rains all day every day

One wheel is near perfect, this on is pristine and I'm just loving the 'Type R right out of the brochure' look the car has now

I really wanted the STi fender badges for that oem brochure look but originals are so ridiculously priced I just let it go, there's a place in Australia that makes a gel replica and they are super cheap

Now that it's dark all the time I decided to revisit the headlights again, light output with the halogen bulbs is like fireflies in jam jars

The difference between halogen and hid is night and day, literally

I adjusted the headlights over to lhd finally but I didn't find any adjustment for the up and down, if they are self leveling then one of them isn't working properly. The hid's that were in the nose cut probably would have worked with new bulbs but a whole new system didn't cost that much

 

[bue car]

Maybe something here can help

How To: Evap + Charcoal Canister removal - NASIOC

 

[George.of.the.Jungle]

your journal takes FOREVER to load becuase of stupid imgur linking.

 

[crx7]

My daughter actually enjoys climbing into her seat through the "monkey bars" and, though it looks dangerous, she is in no danger of hitting her face on the harness bar as mommy predicted

Looks dangerous, what if you get rear ended and the car seat is pushed into the bar. What if the seat belt fails and her head gets smashed into the bar?

 

[Bast]

your journal takes FOREVER to load becuase of stupid imgur linking.

Or the huge image sizes, haha.