alex0856

Being a car person is a bummer sometimes. I should sell it and buy an automatic Corolla. My car still isn't done unfortunately. A mixture of the "while we're here" curse and finding more problems has dragged it out quite a bit. The trans is sitting on the jack ready to go with a new fork, spring, and pivot ball, and the clutch is installed. I drained the coolant to pull the turbo because reasons and found the lower oil drain was crushed - probably from 22 year old me using channel locks on it. It wasn't causing a restriction from what I can tell, it was just oval shaped and causing a leak. Fortunately you can buy replacements still. Today I'll finish getting the perrin inlet installed, then the AOS and rack bushings. I might even get the boot swapped on my year old CV that somehow got a hole in it. While swapping my heater hoses and pulling the upper rad hose I found what appeared to be coolant seeps, likely from the car sitting for so long. I think I've got contamination in the system as well. I'll probably do some sort of flush once it's on the ground. Hopefully my shift linkage seal and turbo oil drain will be here by Tuesday. I'm supposed to be driving it to Seattle next weekend. I think the problem all along was misalignment caused by dumb kids replacing a clutch without the proper tools. Here's some pics of the gore. You can see where the clutch disk was only partially grabbing. I wish I had got one of my bell housing before I cleaned it out. The ring on the back of the flywheel was from a nut that fell in to my bell housing and landed perfectly behind the flywheel. I'll have to find it and take a pic. It's got nice char marks on the head. I'm glad I bought a new timing inspection cover.

I have wanted one for a long time but you can't buy them new anymore unfortunately. I'll probably end up going aftermarket at some point.

Oh definitely. He has told me this himself. I find myself feeling self conscious about using his lift every time I ask. So I help him with his projects whenever I can. He's been working on scrapping a WRX for a while now which was tied up on the lift so we spent a Saturday stripping it so it can be hauled off. Although I won't lie, I found dismantling a car that I didn't need to put back together a lot of fun.

I recommend the vacuum pump method. I've also used the cheap one man bleeder kit. I vacuumed the living hell out of my lines when I did my flush and my car brakes like it was new.

I wish. I just have a very cool friend who lets me use his lift. I bring my own tools so packing those up sucks but my motivation to do my own work increases 10 fold when I have a lift to use.

Didn't start until almost 5 because I'm a dysfunctional person. It's a wonder that I can even get myself dressed in the morning. I went until about 9 before calling it a night. Fluids drained, bolts removed, thingies and gizmos disconnected. The subframe bolts are loose. Just gotta remove the driveshaft and I should have the trans out within an hour tomorrow. Feeling very grateful for my desert and west coast car (sorry midwesterners)

Well, as I feared, adding deadening and insulation to my hatch means it no longer opens itself until you get about halfway, even with new struts. If I give it a little momentum when I open it it'll go to the fully open position. I probably added 10lbs at least. It stays open without issue and does not close itself if you push down on the hatch until you get about halfway. This will likely mean that the struts will wear out sooner. Still can't bring myself to shell out for OEM especially because they may have the same issue. I think the next step is to look around for struts on newer Subarus and see if they have the same mounts. If I get lucky, I'll find one that bolts on and was built for a heavier hatch. It's a minor inconvenience for now and definitely a fair trade for cabin noise. Sitting in the cabin you'd never know that my exhaust is as loud as it is, even at freeway speeds. Today I'm starting my clutch replacement so that should be fun. Hoping I can finish by tomorrow night.

Well I'm glad we had this little discussion. Fortunately I have no HVAC issues since replacing my blower motor BUT I do have two new heater hoses to replace in the near future. I think I'll take that opportunity to do some flushing and clean out any build up, if there is any.

What is the HVAC unit?

I had a surprise 12 hour work day so no stealership trip for me. I did hit the hatch with some damplifier though, so all that's left is to swap out my 3rd brake light flasher module and put the panels back on. Really looking forward to seeing how this helps with drone.

I'm sure there is, I haven't looked. If I had another car to strip, I'd be taking the dash and cabin wiring harnesses, front seats, center console, ECM, and steering wheel. I should probably research this

Today I sorted through my weekend pick n pull haul and started the final step in my insulation project. An 06 NA wagon showed up and it fortunately hadn't been picked clean. I've been wanting an extra set of roof rails so needless to say I was stoked to get a set for $13. I'm hoping I can get the rubber bits off in one piece so I can get them powdercoated. I'm sure I'll have spent more than the $180 it would cost to buy them new (yes you can still buy them) once it's said and done but it'll be a neat project and that's what matters. The most exciting find though was a cupholder liner. I've never had one in my car and have yet to be able to find one that wasn't trashed. I'm still beating myself up for not stripping the black interior 07 OBXT 5MT that was at the Vancouver pick n pull in January. I was in the middle of moving so that was low on the priority list, but the car had everything I would have needed for an Si drive upgrade. As for the hatch, I peeled the felt off the hatch panel, added a layer of luxury liner and put the felt back on top of that. The panel is quite heavy now so I'll be picking up new clips tomorrow to make sure everything stays tight. I've just got to add damplifier to the hatch itself and I'll be 100% done. For now anyway, until I inevitably rip out the headliner and door panels. Don't mind my fire hose, I needed it for work.

Unfortunately there are no plug and play options for our cars so it would require pretty serious modification. I think that as long as you can find a powered opener that is the same length is the strut then you'll be good. The wiring would be fairly easy too especially since our fobs have a trunk unlock button. I think the tricky part would be finding a way to adapt to our mechanical trunk latch. The system appears to tie in to vehicles that already have an electric latch. I don't believe that it's motorized. So, you'd need to find a way to have the system tell a motor to release the latch followed by a delayed operation of the powered opener.

Will do. If these don't last l may shell out for OEM. The lowest I found them for was like 90 bucks a piece. Of course at that point I could just look in to an aftermarket electric opener/closer...

Tuff Support. I got them on RockAuto. They work well. The hatch will fully open after I pull it out a couple of inches. They have this annoying shudder as they slow down toward the end but that may be because mine are no longer perfectly aligned. They're strong though, closing the hatch is no longer a 1 handed maneuver which I'm fine with.