Eric, it's pretty funny you said that. I had a couple different revisions to my last post and I felt that if I started thinking out loud too much it would have been boring for everyone. But I was going to post a thought about doing a custom TSSFab front subframe but then retracted it. Some bad news: My car's rust was much worse than we thought and it took a long time to fix. This means I probably won't have it by Monday. Some good news: My car's rust was fixed, but seriously it's looking pretty killer. I have some pictures to share as I was there today dropping off the JDM rear window. Note: It's black due to primer. Shaved RS doors sonnnnn Fixed rust!
Hell yes, they're super nice and the fender they replaced looks top notch, seriously. It'll all come down to the final end result when I see the clear coat. The only thing I can say is they weren't super transparent about my car not being delivered on Monday, that came out today. But Patience pays off, that's one thing being a car enthusiast has taught me. I need to stop bouncing around with goals. It's clear what I need to do. Once the car is back, I'm focusing on making the interior 100% perfect and how I want it. After that I'll focus on the drivetrain/suspension/brakes/wheels. I have the lighting, body work, engine and most of the interior where I want it. I just have to stay hyper focused and get everything done.
You can also unplug the crank or cam position sensor and do the same thing.. And this one has "Sarah's" doors so good thing you "gave" us the shell so it could be parked and never touched.. Lol..
They're Evo IX seats. IMO the best street seats within a reasonable price. LOL yes, I remember that, I actually called this out I think on page two and said you guys were the one's that did my cage too. I still remember when we loaded it on your trailer without it being a rolling chassis, that was... interesting. I hope Jason got my L doors put on the chassis!
No they are not on it.. We have another set of RS doors sitting in the shop too.. You still need a trunk floor? I may have the goods for ya.. And carpet
Hell yeah I need trunk carpet! Do you have any of the other panels? Or the cardboard? Glad to hear about old Sarah!
FLATBLACKLEAVEIT! OP DELIVERS - Nicely done man, looking killer smooth- can't wait to see the color on!
Where are you having the car painted? I have some similar rust beginning on my E46 that I'd like to stop ASAP.
Thanks Se7enrex! They asked me FRIDAY what the color code is, so I'm hoping I'll still have this early this week. I'm having it done at Bloomington Collision Center, they're #1 on angie's list in the twin cities and so far have been pretty amazing. I'll obviously post lots of pics when I get it back, but that 3rd and 4th pic show the work they did on the fender. They also sound like perfectionists like me so I'm hoping it'll all work out Also I got some of my dash pieces for the 05+ center console swap wrapped. Here's a preview, in person it looks pretty killer.
Oh and one more update, I bought this at like 2AM last night. I'm just going to roll with the WRX (non STi) airbag for the moment but I found this for $150, the cheapest I could find beforehand was $400 for even the WRX. The guy had it on ebay for a few hours before I saw it, LOL. I'm currently trying to buy the PROVA D-Shaped steering wheel shown below.
First the bad news... my car is delayed (yet again). I may not receive it until Christmas Eve! If that's what it takes to have the paint job perfect then... ok. In my sorrows I went on a crazy ordering spree again today, I'm lucky I'm not married yet. I found out Tomei makes aftermarket equal length headers for the VF37, so I bought those from MAPerformance. I also got some misc things listed below. New rally armor mud flaps, because the old ones were sad and tired. Killer B (Black this time) radiator and alternator shrouds. I think I can modify the Killer B radiator shroud, as it's a simple design, without it looking like butt^2. Greddy Magnetic oil drain plug, because I'm paranoid of breaking everything. Grimmspeed exhaust gaskets for the new baller header brah. Kartboy rear subframe lockdown bolts. The limited/S203 hazard button to go with the new color scheme of the 05+ center console, which is pictured below. The pictures really don't do it justice... it's pretty amazing in person. Stretching the vinyl with the plate was... interesting.
What shop did you took your car for rust repair? Looking for a good shop that does good rust repair on my 98RS too. Hopefully it doesn't cost an arm and an leg.
Did you get your stock fan relay stuff to work fine with the dash conversion without swapping and redoing the firewall to accommodate that sexy dash conversion?
Yup the fan relay is 100% working, it was just not wired up/plugged in. It took some dremeling of the heatercore to make it fit behind the bar, but IMO it's better then putting new holes in the firewall to accommodate the GD heater core pipes. The only thing that kind of sucks is the Defrost->Vents knob is backwards. So when you want defrost you put it on top vents, LOL. But again... IMO it's better than drilling/cutting new holes in the firewall. It's not hard to drill new holes, it's just not very clean.
No updates, but I want to install this with 1000cc injectors and have an E85 tune. Supposedly good for around 400AWHP and all stock location hardware with my already upgraded twin scroll components! The version 8 EJ207 is good to about 500AWHP I've been reading. The other nice thing about the 5XTR is that it's designed for the V8 EJ207 specifically and holds about the same spool-up time. http://www.rallysportdirect.com/Blouch-DOM1-5XTR-TS-Dominator-1-5XT-R-10cm^2-Twin-Scroll I should have my car back Friday though so this thread will get some traction again!
I installed 800cc or 850cc injectors (I forget which) in the EJ20G before I sold it to you. Can you just use those?
Yeah that's a super good point. 1st world problems, I have more Subaru parts than I can keep up with. I was originally going with 850cc's but that would only support the VF37 that's in the car now. To fully take advantage of the 15XTR I will need 1000cc injectors. I'm not looking for crazy power, with a 2500(ish) lb car and the R160. Moore performance made an up-pipe that worked with Evo turbos, an Evo IX twin scroll on this thing would be INSANE. But there's not a lot of support for them, so I'm going to stick with the KISS route. This is further down the line obviously, just trying to get a road map together. Next for sure is transmission/brakes/suspension. The car would be stupid dangerous/unbalanced with 400AWHP and stock WRX brakes.
Here's some pics for those of you who haven't seen them yet. Tomei EL headers for my VF37... such beauty, much wow.
It was a very brief thought, I ended up sticking with my original color choice and I'm very happy I did! The list of stuff I want to still do to this car is staggering, I hope I can keep up the momentum to get through all my check lists. My 4.44/DCCD transmission arrives on Thursday so that'll be the next big project for the car.
Nope, that's the GC8 S201 scoop, it's a carbon fiber replica not OEM though. You're right about it being massive
Nice to see it in the wild! Parked a looong way away from any other cars You going to recreate the EVO video with this one, that parking garage looks familiar
Got some stuff done on the car this weekend, had about 9 hours yesterday. It took a few hours but I installed the rear wiper and got it wired into the car with the 02 WRX wagon wiper stalk. Within that time I also got the JDM rear fog switch installed, the new Hella fog lights, but they're not wired up to the switch yet, just hard wired to the main fogs. The other small thing I got installed is the OEM JDM GC8 era fender badges. First the install process for anyone that wants to do a JDM rear window install, this is specific to the 02 WRX wiring harness. (i.e. 0 people). This is what I received with the window, including the rusty old wiper blade mount. In prep I used the Eastwood Rust Encapsulator matte black paint, seriously... this stuff is incredible. I let it sit for about a hour or so, while moving on to the next steps. (as well as the screws and the grimmspeed plate antenna delete). This was it after letting it dry... no prep work done to it and it looks almost new. Also note the scale in the background... I weigh everything I put on the car, the full wiper install is about 4-5lbs. First thing I did was cut through the cardboard on the rear decklid panel, the nice thing was that the sound proofing was already cut as well as obviously the decklid itself. I didn't need to exact, messy is fine. I did this with the cutting bit on the Dremel that looks like a drill bit. After doing this I simply cut an X shaped slit in the deck. Note: Also the two screw holes at the VERY top of the picture is only two mounting holes on a USDM GC8, the third is missing but isn't needed. After cutting the hole I moved onto the wiper stalk. First thing I noticed was the pin count on the non rear wiper stalk was the same as the sedan. The intermittent control unit is the exact same, it's down to the stalk itself, anyway not important just thought it was weird and it threw me off a bit. After that came the wiring differences between the GC8 and the GD 02. The only wiring discrepancy surprisingly was the power wires were called for BY (Black with Yellow stripe). The wires on the GC8 assembly were white. The black wire was ground, so I crimped an end to it so that I could ground it to the chassis where it was mounted. The most important wire was GR (Green with Red stripe) which was the 2nd wire I needed to run to the front of the cabin. This was the wire that goes into the intermittent control unit in the wiper stalk. I didn't take a pic, but to do this I used 16 gauge speaker wire. Looking back I wish I used 18-20 gauge as that's all that was running from the primary fuse box which you can see here. The pin was #3 on the most lower/grey connector. This was already fused out of a Sedan car, which is interesting but I was cool with the free fuse! I simply spliced it to the new speaker cable you can see in the lower right of the pic. The other cable (GR) was spliced into the stock the exact same way. Here's the final product, however hard to see (sorry).
Here's the little "template" I made after sitting and looking at fender picture after fender picture. I'm pretty close I think. Here's another night shot of the interior, can you tell I'm obsessed with it? The Hellas installed. And a few shots I took last night while aiming the lights to make sure I'm not blinding people. You can really see where the LED conversion shines, the orange is REALLY orange.
Are you referring to where I grounded it or just in the splices I'm doing in general? Let me know and I'll get some pics!
I'm referring just to the splices in general. Solder and heatshrink is nice but it wicks up the wire and makes it brittle. I'd like to figure out a source for OEM style crimp connectors for splices and ratcheting crimpers. From what I've seen, anything worth buying is usually several hundred dollars though.
I use this at work for crimping ferrules. http://www.amazon.com/Crimp-Technologies®-Ratcheting-Ferrule-Crimper/dp/B007GZQD08/ref=pd_cp_hi_0
I've never really had any issues with all of the soldering I've done, the key is to apply the heat and get the solder to adhere quickly before causing too much heat on the copper wires. The way I splice everything together is pretty methodical and meticulous. Without solder even and just heat shrink it takes quite a bit of force to pull the wires apart. I can show closeups of an example of how I do it, but typically when I'm done soldering wires they're still shiny and not brittle at all. I think it just comes down to practicing, I've been soldering since I was a nerdy teenager. I trust a good solder job + heat shrinking more than just crimping wires together, but that's probably because I've never had a good crimper and I'm good at soldering and buy good materials.
So the other day I went through a car wash to keep my new paint job all shiny and new and forgot that the body shop took out the crappy plate I made to keep my filter dry. Long story short I was driving home and did a decent pull and threw a code immediately. I pretty much knew right away what was up, got home took out the MAF and it was wet, not good. I cleaned it off with proper cleaner, put it in and cleared the code. Fast forward a bit and I've struggled with a proper solution. I want it to get as much cool air as possible without worried about it getting wet. Turns out Injen, surprisingly, makes a good product that uses a screen that keeps water from getting through (for the most part) without causing airflow restrictions. It has some good reviews, it's cheap and I'll keep everyone in the loop if it solved my problems.
