Yet another Subaru cherry popped - '03 WRX wagon

I think you can download full good PDF service manuals from the North Ursalia website IIRC?

 

Re-did the valve cover gasket on the pass. side this evening. Figured it'd be a nice 30 min. job or so, as I had everything out of the way already. Needless to say, if it leaks again I'll be paying somebody to do it the next time.

 

So bit the bullet a week ago and bought a new GrimmSpeed uppipe with a little help from some birthday monies. Appeared on the doorstep yesterday, went in the car today. I'm fairly certain the couple gaskets I had to reuse held up as it doesn't sound like it's got an obvious leak anymore. Needless to say, stoked to have the new pipe in and to finally have this thing pretty much wrapped up. Gonna have the wife drop me off at the boss' place tomorrow so I can sneak 'er home. Will probably just hide it in the garage until I can setup a tune appointment. Still unsure of where I'll go to get it tuned, so hopefully I can get that figured out in the near future. Thinking RS or NF unless somebody's got other/better suggestions.

Anybody know what this random 10mm head bolt is for (the one that's half in)? It was on there loose when we put the heads back on. Generally when I take something apart I'll put the bolts back in so as to not lose them or where they go. I took tons of pictures during disassembly and can't see anything attached to it. Also, the car's back together and there isn't anything major missing, that I know of. Just weird to have a mystery bolt. I left it there as to not bring bad juju upon myself...

 

Also, over the last year of taking the air cleaner box in/out repeatedly, the two little slots that hold the tabs in on the motor side have broken off. I think 1 was actually gone when I got the car. Would it be reasonable to just source a "new" bottom half of the box or would it make more sense to find an aftermarket cone type intake with a MAF mount built in?

 

+1 for NF tunes, and RS is good too.

Don't know about your mystery bolt.

For the intake, you should be able to find a stock one for dirt cheap. Otherwise if you go aftermarket, don't do any short ram intakes. Even with a heat shield, they will yield higher intake temps than stock. Stay stock, or go cold air intake. FYI, new/different intake requires a new tune.

 

Well that solves that then. Guess I'll stick with the stock box and just try to locate a bottom half.

 

I know this is probably pretty boring for most, but this is definitely the coolest thing I've seen in a long time:



Drove it home last night. Felt cool even driving it at 1/4 throttle most of the way, but damn is it hard to set the cruise at 55 in a WRX. It's insane how different the clutch/shifter combo feels between the 214k mile Legacy and this thing with a brand new clutch and the factory short throw, especially after having not driven it for 2 months.

 

How did the uppipe go? Any surprise's? How long did it take? I've had mine for two weeks maybe and just waiting on better Temp's.

 

The only surprises I had were that the used one I bought was junk, but that's my own fault. Learned the hard way.

Otherwise, it's a pretty straightforward job in my opinion. Kinda putsy, but generally simple. The only thing that I didn't know going into it was that there's a fairly specific torque spec for the gaskets and also the sequence in which you do them. I found a couple different suggested methods and went with the the one that seemed like it made the most sense and was pretty thorough. I'll post a link for you when I get back on the computer later.

Are you currently running all stock exhaust or have you had some of it apart before?

 

I have a cat back on right now. The down pipe has been off to do the clutch. Other than that I have a up and down pipe to be installed.

 

Perfect. The downpipe has to come off to do the uppipe, so that should work out good for ya. Here are the instructions I went by (it'll open a word doc):

Hope this works.

 

So was under the car a couple weeks ago trying to figure out a noise in the driveline, when my mechanic friend noticed the sway bar end link sitting funny. We then noticed that one of the sway bar bushings had a little piece missing from it and one side of the bushing clamp was a little loose (gap from the frame, like 1/4" or so). Was just gonna order some new bushings and put them in and went out to make sure they look the same. The sway bar is still sitting funny, even with the weight of the car on it. Obviously this isn't normal, so is that slight gap in the bushing enough to do this or is the sway bar tweaked from something prior? Seems like any awful lot of tweakage.

Coincidentally was just browsing for aftermarket sway bars last night...

Driver side:



Pass. side:

 

Wrong sway bar?