obsolete's 2008 WRX maintenance & mods

So I bought @predavore 's car. Awesome car, awesome dude. I figured I should post a thread here instead of continuing to annoy him with texts about it. Do people still post forum threads? Do forums even still exist?

Anyway, because I picked up the car on Christmas Eve, my wife did the bow thing as a surprise the next morning:


The Volt in the background has a broken oil pump which is the reason I needed a new DD in a hurry.

First fix, squeaky creaky shifter. Turns out it was this rubber boot in the tunnel. I was able to pull it back with some long needle-nose pilers and shoot some white lithium grease in there. Quality of life improved.


I believe this car has the STi short shifter. It's got some play in it, seems like time for new bushings. Does anyone have any suggestions? Did anyone read this far?

 

Yes, people still read and view forums. Pretty sure it's me and tangleypoo and that's it.
Anyway, there's five (5) bushings to concern with in the shifter. If you're getting side-to-side play, then usually it's the U-Joint/"Trunion?" at the front of the upper linkage. You can get replacement parts to take that slop up, and the shifter feel is shockingly satisfying when it's all tightened up. Here's a link to the full bushing kit on TiC: https://turninconcepts.com/products/holy-shift-set-5mt-2006-2014}
It's worth noting that the front U-Joint is the biggest headache out of all the bushings, but it's doable with adequate tools, IIRC. Happy hunting.

 

There's a handful of us old losers with nothing better to do than check in on the forums more often than necessary in hopes that there's ever activity. Or it's just me. But I'm here for it, so carry on...

I've replaced a few of those sloppy 5 spd shifter components in my day. Kind of a pita with how little room there is to work in there, but it's definitely possible with some patience and a combination of death from above and below.

 

This spring comes to mind also, I don't know if the WRX has it, but it was missing on one of my previous cars.

 

Thanks guys! Subaru really overcomplicated this thing...5 bushings in a shift linkage is objectively too many. I wasn't sure whether I should be looking at 5MT or 6MT parts since this is the "STi" shifter on a 5MT, which is kinda confusing.

I will look into that spring. I have noticed the shifter doesn't have much of a self-centering feel, which makes an enthusiastic 2-3 shift a little tricky sometimes.

 

Where did you find that diagram, @Eazy_E_Rich ? I can't find that spring on the 5MT parts diagram at Amayama:

 

It was actually from an old forum, looks like here: https://bbs.legacycentral.org/viewtopic.php?t=37134

Good chance the WRX ain't got it if it's not in the diagram

 

For what it's worth, if I remember right none of my vehicles that I've done this on originally came with "the spring" on them, or at least it wasn't there when I went to do the work. I think that there was always a place to hook the spring even if it didn't call for it. I put the spring in place on all of them because it seemed kinda silly to me that they'd have a place for it to go but not actually call out for it there from factory.

Long story short, I think even if it doesn't "need" the spring you can still put it in there and make it more better.

Sorry I can't remember all the specifics. Last time I did one was a few years ago and that was longer ago than last week, so... Haha.

 

Okay, thanks, looks like the spring is part number 33022GA081. Yeah, old stuff, not used since 1998. You guys have the ancient wisdom. Subaru apparently didn't change that part of the linkage by 2008, so the hole for the spring is still there if I wanted to experiment with it. I think I'll chase after the bushings first, though.

 

https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2434535

 

Awesome info, thank you!

 

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

 

Is that a "hint hint" and you'll be coming over sometime? Haha.

 

Old Subaru owners never die, they just post on forums that no one visits.

 

Seems like we got enough here for a party, by my standards anyway.

The old handbrake boot was starting to peel, so I replaced it and the shift boot while I was in there. These are el cheapos from "dsvleather" on eBay. I paid a couple extra bucks for "real leather". I can't vouch for their realness, but they are thick and heavy, maybe to a fault. There's more resistance than I'd like to push the handbrake down fully because you have to crumple the boot to do it, like maybe there's a little too much material there. Was I supposed to oil these and bake them like a baseball glove or something? Looks decent enough though.

For the shift boot, I think I understand now what @predavore was trying to warn me about buying a red stitched shift boot. This boot has the larger STI shift knob opening, but because I was too dumb to realize that at first, I figured their pattern was just bad (these were cheap after all) and I gathered up enough of the boot to make it fit into the shift knob retainer. I ended up with kind of a Quasimodo look, which is not great. I'll either 3D print a STI shift boot retainer to address this or get a better boot at some point. Maybe Redline Goods is the answer? At least everything matches now.


Oh yeah, I put the spare red k4rt30y sticker on the shift knob to replace the worn out black one. I've got at least 3 different shades of red going on now, but it works for me.

 

At least it's not a Crown Royal bag... Haha.

 

What's wrong with that?

 

Goes with my coat...

 

There was a time in my life (like back when this car was new) when that would've been the coolest thing imaginable...

The 2008 navigation system is cute but not useful, so the car needed a phone mount. This is the carzdeluxe functional defrost vent mount:


I don't usually like paying for something I could (in theory) 3D print myself, but this is an awesome design and the price was reasonable. The installation is really clean, doesn't involve adhesive, wedging anything into gaps between trim pieces, etc. Just pop out the old defrost vent and this fits perfectly in its place. I did whip up a little custom adapter that puts my phone in a better position than the included one:

 

I like that. Were you able to get power over to it for charging? That's the main reason I never did anything too far from the center console.

 

You mean the whole prison suit?

 

It's gonna sound kinda old school but I never liked using my phone for nav - a) I'd always forget to plug it in/mount it until I actually needed it and b) too small to do **** with without yanking it and fiddling with it. Probably not a huge deal these days for most people but for me, that's annoying, so I decided I wanted a dedicated unit if the car didn't have nav itself.

Back when my dumb bank actually had reward points for credit card purchases (well, paying off credit card purchases), I sat on the points until it could pay for a Garmin GPS unit, car-mounted one, one of these things - https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/721098/pn/010-02469-00/

Mine's around 7 years old now but still works great. Suction cup mounted to just next to the A pillar on the drivers side, it was/is awesome. Higher end models get traffic over the air, which means for most major cities it'll give you a decent heads up and reroute you; don't even need to be in nav for it to display if you're heading into a congested area. They do bluetooth so it'll interface with your phone, so you can see texts and crap there if you want. They get forever updates, so yank it from it's mount every few months and plug it into your PC, and new maps for free, forever...and the best part - GPS speedometer. Even though my current WRX has the factory nav, whenever I change tires or whatever, I slap my Garmin in and run it around for 100 or so miles just to see if the speedo matches what things in outer space say my velocity is. It sucks to set the car at 63 only to find out the trooper that pulled you has you going 68...of all the vehicles I've had one of these things in, my current WRX is the only one that pretty much matches what the GPS says. Everything else it's been in was off by 3-5mph, on both sides.

Plus all the usual trip planning, stats collection (avg speed, distance driven, blah blah blah). The only real complaints I had were running the power cord to the lighter socket, and that the suction cup mount would detach itself whenever the weather swung a lot; winter primarily. Running the power cord down between the dash and A pillar and under the steering wheel area seemed to be the least annoying after years of trial and error.

FWIW - 6" seems to work fine; 7 or 8 might be overkill but YMMV. (that's what she said)

 

Man, you guys are hilarious, that full Crown Royal ensemble is the official outfit of "lost in the sauce."

Thanks. I played around with it a little bit and I think with the right length of cable, I can get power from the socket below the HVAC knobs up over the steering column without excessive dangle. Something between 2-3 feet. I found a 30" cable on eBay and have that on its way to try out.
I also posted the adapter model on Thingiverse in case it's useful to anyone: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7268731

 

@Evil_Ed a couple years ago, I would have agreed with you, but my dad had a TomTom device with "lifetime updates" until one day, TomTom decided to end its lifetime. They wanted to get paid again, I guess. Now it's useless. Nice to see Garmin is still hanging on making decent standalone devices. I agree the phone screen is not as nice to use, but I love Waze and wouldn't want to switch away from that (at least until Google kills it). Plus I expect I'll be playing music or podcasts from the phone on road trips and it's nice to have that all in one device. Might even work decent enough for calls with where it's mounted; I'll have to see.

Speedometer on this car seems about 2 MPH high with the current wheels/tires.

 

One of the first things I was thinking when I got the car was that it would be great to have wideband and boost gauges mounted on top of the steering column or in the gauge cluster surround like I've had on past turbo cars. The more I think about it though, I really have no intention of tuning this thing, so I'll probably just leave well enough alone. Keep it clean and simple.

 

What if it is actually working but you just drive like an old man so much so that it never moves?

 

Ahoy, seems like you have a barnacle on yer dashboard there matey. Also, that's not the BRZ in your signature. I think you just wanted to show off the fancy carbon fiber wheel

 

This ground strap was broken, so I replaced it with one I made at work. It's a little thinner than the original one from Subaru, but the price was right:


After replacing it, I'm positive it does nothing. I measure <1 ohm from the body to the exhaust heat shield, so my wire is making a good connection, but there's no connection between that heatshield and the manifold or the adjacent heat shields. So, whatever. Didn't hurt anything.

 

I'm just impressed that you were able to remove a fastener from an OEM heat shield. That's wild.

 

I’ve

I second that that looks like a barnacle on the dash lol. I’ve always loved the oem plus look of the smy gauge clusters in with the stock cluster. Keeps it clean.

Also wow. I didn’t realize I wanted a new steering wheel until I just saw that one. That’s stunning!

 

I was skeptical about going non-OEM when I replaced mine as it was on its last legs. I went with a D-ring, full alcantara and was very pleasantly surprised.

 

molded innovations?
I’m looking at their perforated leather OEM plus one.
How’s the alcantara holding up?

 

It wasn't molded innovations when I bought it, some other company that seems to have gone under. Looks exactly the same though. The Alcantara is fine, could use some freshening, but I also don't use it as a daily driver.

 

My wife never gets tired of that joke