I am finally making one of these! Where to begin? How about the beginning!
I picked up my first RS in 2009 with the assumption that it would be a Daily Driver I did not want to mod... so much for that!
My "fun car" was a 1997 Mitsubishi VR-4 (which I sold 11/11
) that I never drove in the winter, so I needed a DD.
My previous DD was a 96 Jeep Cherokee, which I liked, but almost never used the cargo space and really I just grew tired of it and hated
the terrible gas mileage, plus it had tranny issues. A friend of mine had bought an RS and I remembered how much I liked the car, so I
started searching for one.
I eventually found one on eBay in California, and after a somewhat lengthy hassle from the seller there, the car was in my possession.
Here are pics from the eBay auction. Clean car, sort of high miles.
Unfortunately, the car's paint wasn't as nice as the auction's pictures led me to believe. Lots of little pits and chips, but oh well it was too
late now. I drove the car home from the shipping company's lot that day without issue.
I installed the stereo from my Jeep and had a remote start put in, and that was pretty much the extent of my mods. Oh, I also had
WRX front brakes and a full exhaust in a trade where someone was putting their car back to stock after a crash.
After owning the car for 3000 miles or so, it died in a parking lot while I was driving 5-10 mph. Had it towed home and
eventually found out it was a broken timing belt
The local Subaru dealership wanted thousands of dollars to fix it and I certainly didn't have thousands of dollars available. So, I bookmarked
the DIYs and how-to's and a friend and I did the timing belt ourselves. We also took off one of the heads to have it rebuilt and some valves
replaced (misfire codes told us what side to go to). A week later we put it all back together and the car ran great again!
Total spent: $600, not $4000.
Soon after I realized I loved the car, but it was too damn slow. I needed boost. I tried to avoid it, telling myself I had the VR-4 if I wanted
to drive fast, but it didn't work. I wanted a swapped RS.
I put mine up for sale and at about the same time found one I wanted. Mine had no serious buyers and the car I really wanted was sold to
someone else. I should have given up, but instead looked even harder.
Then, in February of 2010, I found an amazing swapped car in California. This thing had everything. A US STi motor, a sweet interior, lots of suspension work,
the miles were low and it was clean.
All it needed was a 6 speed (luckily for me the 5spd broke while he still had it, so the price came down).
I locked in a pretty sweet deal with someone on here for a complete 6SPD swap (tranny, diff, axles, drive shaft, hubs, DCCD, everything!)
Continued in 2nd post
