What did you do to your 4th gen. Legacy today? Vol - 10

Back in August of 2011, when the car had roughly 60,000 miles on it, I purchased a 19mm JDM rear sway bar from a guy on the boards here from northern NJ... picked it up from him at his house... hollow tube bar, super light at a hair less than 5 lbs... it was one of my 3 favorite chassis mods on the car.

Last week it broke - with the Legacy now at 387k - bar rusted thru on the outboard side of the right side bushing... rats! Rallysport Direct came thru in the clutch, and I had a new, solid, 21mm Cusco bar ( a little beefy at 10.6 lbs., but whatever ) earlier this week. A couple new end links, and we're back in business.

 

Have a great weekend, and Let's Go Brandon!

Waaaaaait a second here... 387k miles?? stock block?

Edit: looks like NA right? Still, not bad.

Spend about an hour trying to disassemble the driver-side side panel in the back to look for the fuel pump controller module. Found 2 phillips screws in back, and removed (2) 12mm bolts in the front (one under seat holding seat belt trim column, and another said column piece holding the main panel in place),but the panel was still tight and I couldn't locate any other screws or clips to remove it. Any hints as to what I missed? Are there bolts down low where the floor mats lie,and then it lifts up like a door panel. My Haynes manual gives me nothing.

Having free time, and seeing the hidden rear bumper skin bolt behind the storage panel in the back,I decided to pop out a caved in corner of the skin. I had done the other side before, but this one was worse, and I ended up having to slice it to get a prybar in. I will let the plastic relax back to the pre-cave state,and then epoxy.

Oh, and yesterday I replaced the spark plug wires and an infrequent intermittent "miss" disappeared.

Slowly getting it back in shape. Out of the blue in the summer of 2020 I had two minor heart attacks and ended up getting a pacemaker after showing up at the ER with a pulse hovering around 30. This made them very nervous. Apparently I "walked off" the heart attacks and they were only discovered as small damaged areas in a recent nuclear stress test. End result was me not being able to work on car for a bit. Even now I can sense that I don't have the stamina for extended wrenching since not being able to swim has also stiffened me up, A LOT. Getting old sucks,but it is still better than the DRT (dead right there) I came close to experiencing a year ago. And I get to look forward to a turbo pacemaker upgrade in December. Fun Fun Joy Joy

TIA

Bob

Hi Bob,

There are two screws hidden behind the cargo net latches where the trunk floor meets the side panel. Towards the top of the side panel are also two latches with screws hidden behind covers you need to pry open. If you haven't already, download the "vacation pics" here (http://people.csail.mit.edu/ilh/vacation/) as they will be much more detailed than your Haynes manual.

I once removed a spark plug that was only halfway in. Wish you good health.

Today i installed in my legacy 3.0R H6 headers custom JDM. The improvement in gas flow its amazing. The engine its more agile, if you have a H6 change headers tomorrow!!!

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Waaaaaait a second here... 387k miles?? stock block?

 

Edit: looks like NA right? Still, not bad.

Yes, NA. And as I've mentioned here before, blew the original engine at 181K ( timing belt snapped - early ). New Subaru short block, had the heads done, replaced the original clutch while everything was out of the way, and picked up a new radiator ( GP ).

heading to bend tomorrow to drop off my processwest intercooler and splitter to joeinoregon. Dropping off a hood for shralp. Stopping by arcflash (one of gator's sponsor) to see about a build for the racewagon.

anyone else need transportation from seattle to bend or back?

Sure there's a rcsb f150 in bend you can drive over here to Boise for me pretty please ��

sure. no worries. 10 hours round trip. pick you up at 2am?

Some say no one knows what happened to Billy that summer. He bought the turbo subaru and they only found blood stained gloves and a few uninstalled spark plugs. His 10mm was never found.

Happy Halloween

Some say no one knows what happened to Billy that summer. He bought the turbo subaru and they only found blood stained gloves and a few uninstalled spark plugs. His 10mm was never found.

 

Happy Halloween

Not Subaru themed but we had a great Halloween party tonight in the neighborhood. Lots of candy and hot cider for kids, beer,wine and jelly shots for adults.

More molestation! Pulled and gave the headlights a proper polish, scienced the crap out a rattling exhaust shield, did the rocker cover/spark plug seals on both sides after finding oil in #1 when I did the plugs and took to the crappy aftermarket front bumper with a hot air gun to make it fit the vehicle a little better. The bottom lip clips have always hung too low for the pins to engage, on tear down it turns out it's just a crappy aftermarket PoS that wouldn't sit right even if you vacuformed it on. But hey, the clips are now on and the towbar imprint now looks like a.. shallower towball imprint. At least I burnt my fingers trying!

 

Being unaware of the setup of these rocker covers at the time and having only owned the vehicle for 36 hours, I threw up a little when I first spotted oil in that plughole. That should be in the welcome sticky.

 

I have a clock/radio that intermittently forgets time and stations, clock unit dies in the arse for 20-40 seconds if you push a button/look at it funny. Relevant harnesses/fuses are all secured and inox'd and I reworked the solder on the clock board but every now and then they just frizz out. Likely related is an intermittent flicker of the clock unit and radio/speedo/tacho (specifically) backlights. 10-ish flashes (dimming more than flashing), the clock goes off for about 5 seconds, then all comes back. Gotta be a common circuit here, that's going to be fun to diagnose. Suggestions always welcome.

 

As a more general question, does anyone have some good info on what makes a good rim from a technical/mechanical perspective? I want to ditch the stockies but I have no idea what constitutes a "good" wheel, which I need to factor in along with the aesthetics of the thing. I am familiar with fitment concerns like offsets, caliper considerations etc, but you could line 6 mad looking wheels up from the hokiest Chinese crap to top end JDM units and I would have no idea which one was going to implode on the nearest speed bump.

if a rim is sold in the usa, it should pass a minimum standard. if its an import from somewhere else, it's probably should survive the mounting process.

Wheels that fail generally have been abused. Any wheel will fail if you try hard enough. Pothole at 60? probably ok. Pothole that destroys your suspension? sorry you need a new wheel too.

A school buddy got a great job at Ford testing wheels to destruction by drifting into a curb. Took him 3 days 8 hours a day to work up enough nerve to go fast enough to snap the wheels off. He was off for a couple weeks from the whiplash.

I've never busted a wheel but i've removed tires from wheels merely driving. ymmv. Going to say a broken wheel is usually because stupid. Not judging tho.

Last autox of the season yesterday, co-drove a friend's (also an LGT wagon owner and forum member from a long while back) NB Miata since I hadn't figured out why my WBO2 was reading lean (~0.85 lambda) under boost and didn't want to risk anything.

After getting home, I swapped the winters on to the LGT and tried to diagnose the "lean" WBO2 reading further. Turns out, the gasket between the Tomei ELH and the 3-bolt up-pipe is blown, so I'm guessing the false lean reading is due to that leak.

The "solution" is of course to buy a new gaskets, then spend the ridiculous effort (or I suppose just buy a flex-head 14mm box wrench ) to remove the 3-bolt up-pipe and replace the gaskets. But I'm sort of feeling like if I'm going to go through that much effort, I might as well just buy a set of Swaintech coated KBHH and replace the Tomei setup with that... Car's going to my parents' garage for the winter in a week or two anyway so...

Was doing a once over in the engine bay and found this rubber piece down in the passenger fender area. Tried to find its home but didn't have any luck. Anyone know what this piece is?

I rebuilt my front GNP sway bar end links with new bushings and spaced the links better with washers so they aren't binding as much. I used the best used bushings from the front and rear to rebuild the rear end links and spaced them out better with the actual spacers, and some washers.

I kind of hate that the mount on the trailing arm is not parallel to the sway bar ear. Why is that? I have heard that gd WRX/STis can flip their bar if they go to full droop, is that angle to stop that from happening? I don't think the multi-link rear has enough droop to allow the bar to flip anyways...

Also, new whiteline swaybar bushings in the front. Not sure they were required but I figured while I'm chasing a popping noise I might as well do them too.

No noises anymore, which is good. I'm sure it was the end links not being greased and the bushings being squished from the poor alignment without the washers/spacers.

Was doing a once over in the engine bay and found this rubber piece down in the passenger fender area. Tried to find its home but didn't have any luck. Anyone know what this piece is?

 

 

 

I just had one of the best drives ever in my wagon.

Finally put on some wheels that fit, and with the performance alignment, rear control arms, coilovers, Brembos and temps around 50*, it was amazing.. Fall's peaking here and didn't see another car on the road for my entire time.

No pics Booze? Wheels....foliage....wagon love? Too busy enjoying the drive I suppose.

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Met some friends for a hike and didn't get a single pic..

Tried to get a video on the way home, but doesn't do the scenery or experience justice.

What roads did you hit? It’s a fantastic time of year in western pa (when it isn’t raining)

Start at the Laughlintown Pie Shoppe (fresh slices, sammies and donuts), Linn Run State Park, RT711 south to Stahlstown, and the best part is RT130 back to civilization

12 hours round trip to drop off rare parts in Bend. Met up with Gator's goto Subaru shop about getting the race wagon into hpde condition. Something to be said about having a master fabricator fix up the minor issues before tuning on the dyno and doing a corner balance.

I'm bummed about never getting to race it, but someone will get a fun car.