Hello all I'm still alive.
Sorry for not updating. Life has been hectic since the start of this year between the bush fires hitting us, a breakup and COVID. But work on the car has gone on.
So this is what I've been up to with the car.
So I started stripping it for sanding the day after Christmas, but that stop not long after due to the bush fires. Our town was lucky and we only lost around 15 homes, and my family only lost the woodshed and back fence. Fortunately the car had been moved to a slightly safer location during this. It actually made the local facebook group as someone was concerned it was stolen as they'd spotted it when my dad drove it to the other location.
So I didn't end up starting the sanding until late January due to all this. Turned out the passenegr side was a nightmare due to the previous paint job.
As it got to the back door on the passenger side I gave the car a power wash. This revealed that the entire door was cover in bog as it just fell off. I have no idea why this was done as the door was straight underneath.
Luckily the local wrecker had one in the same colour so $80 later I had a new door.
Other side of the car here featuring my wonderful hand print.
I'm going to give a shout out to audiobooks as they are what got me through the sanding. I think I listened to 60 hours worth of books while sanding and it was basically the only thing that kept me going some days.
I haven't added any photos from the painter as they were very low pixel and don't really have many photos of the progress as I finished sanding its not that interesting.. Next step the painter just primed and blocked the car. It ended up painted in Holden Monaro Metallic Red and the cladding BMW Dolphin Grey.
These photos are straight off the gun.
Then the painter let the car bake for a couple of weeks and then buffed the whole car. I ended up taking 3 days off work to put the car back together as work was quite at the time. But it only took a day and a half or so.
Car newly arrived. I did like it without the roof rails but I think they needed to be there as it was part of the identity of an Outback.
All back together with exception of the spats.
I didn't mention it before but I completely remade the area around the front mount on the bumper so it looks like the bumper was never cut. I don't have any clear pictures of it though. Also front and center is the custom grill. I think the VA STI badge looks much better than the stock one too
And a clean engine bay picture for good measure.
2 weeks later I waxed it and the car looks amazing.
So the next hurdle was getting the car passed emissions. I failed the first two times and as the round trip was about 300km each time it was a good shakedown for the car.
The things that were issues were:
Rear hatch struts blown (the painted noted this when it got cold)
Clockspring was broken (causing an airbag light)
Rear struts blown and the top nuts sheared off (they disconnect about 20km into the first trip. I noted the car was bumpy didn't know why until I got home and took one of the wheels off)
Major misfire in all 4 cylinders (burnt sparkplugs, I now hate subaru becasue of the spark plug location)
Running way to rich (tune was shit, that's my fault)
Brake booster leaked (would cause the rpm to go up and not down when you braked)
Throttle body would stick open ( caused the rpm to hang at about 3000rpm)
The reason for the misfire was the spark plugs had burnt out and self gapped to 2.5mm. I replaced them with a colder range and the misfire is gone.
I completely re-tuned the car with the help of CRJohnson who has been an absolute legend in getting the car to where it is. This got the car passed emissions and running fantastically.
I replaced everything else listed above and it got rid of the idle issues and ride quality and now the car works fine and I've had no issues since.
This is a photo of the car on the day it passed emissions. The front and rear spats are now installed.
I'm currently in the process of getting the car engineered. I've had to go back to the stock brakes on the front as otherwise I'd need to brake test the car which costs a shit ton of money ($1-2K). The engineer also wanted me to make an addition crash bar due to me cutting the original for the inter cooler. I ended up buying a cheap welder to do this and it did the trick just fine.
So that's where the car sits at the moment. It should be looked at by the engineer and registered by the end of the month and I'm super keen to have it on the road as you can imagine.
I forgot to mention that I picked up a 20mm RSB for $35 and now that's on the car and I replaced the steering rack back to the original as the WRX one leaked like a sieve. Sadly the paint has reacted slightly on the rear quarters and the roof so they'll probably get repainted in the summer but it's not something I'm to worried about and you don't notice until you're up close. This is most likely due to the previous shitty respray.
Currently the car is running 8psi very happily. It spools quick and sounds like a jet engine on boost. The low range torque is crazy too. It's just under 7 seconds for the 0-100km but thats without launching as its the stock clutch.
So to end a picture of a very happy me with the completed car.
If anyone wants more pictures/info about anything let me know as I've tried to keep this post short while covering as much as possible.
Luke
