What did you really do to your car today? V3.1

[Patrick Olsen]

- Actually washed my Legacy for the first time since... I don't know. Multiple years ago. It just sits in the corner of my driveway, waiting for me to resume work on the H6 swap (some day...). I finally bought a car cover for it, but before I put the cover on it needed a wash.

- Picked up a bunch of parts from Stohlman Subaru in preparation for pulling the engine in the beater Impreza to fix a couple oil leaks (oil separator plate, cam seals, etc) and replace the clutch. [For those in NoVA who may not know, parts.stohlmansubaru.com uses the same parts diagrams and parts search as parts.subaru.com, so it's very handy to find parts. And Stohlman gives 10-25% discount pricing if you use that online ordering, which is quite nice.]

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[Patrick Olsen]

Double

[listentodave]

Washed and waxed her a few days ago. Admired the shine today a few days later and how almost new she looks from a distance.

[Unabomber]

This is like 10+ years late but what are you gonna do? I remember when the $350ish price of these from Japan seems like a life altering amount of money back when I first learned of these. And now they are no longer made. And now they are over $1000 even if you can find them used. I got this lickably new and after much time and fear, the install happened today with the help of a local who oddly has installed this in 6 cars.

Pretty much a zero drama mod and works super terrifically. I did learn that the wagon headliner differs from the sedan or maybe its an 04 thing, so there's a gap. I'm gonna either fill that with a dremel'd map light piece to cover or make a cover with the extra headliner piece. Either way, not mad.

[Patrick Olsen]

See below.

[Patrick Olsen]

- Rolled 263,000 miles on the beater Impreza this morning while running errands.

- While getting gas a few miles from home, noticed the left rear tire was looking a bit soft. Got home and sure 'nuff it was at 14psi. Decided it must be time to put the winter wheels/tires on the car, so I did that.

- Looked in my little maintenance log and found the summer tires have not quite 6k miles on them and are already down to probably 4/32" of tread. (I don't have a tread depth gauge, but just looking at them I figured they were low enough that I probably would replace them rather than put them back on the car next spring. I was quite surprised to see they have so little mileage on them!)

[Unabomber]

Originally Posted by Patrick Olsen

- Looked in my little maintenance log and found the summer tires have not quite 6k miles on them and are already down to probably 4/32" of tread. (I don't have a tread depth gauge, but just looking at them I figured they were low enough that I probably would replace them rather than put them back on the car next spring. I was quite surprised to see they have so little mileage on them!)

Bum tires, R triple 8s or your right foot to blame?

[Patrick Olsen]

Originally Posted by Unabomber

Bum tires, R triple 8s or your right foot to blame?

I suppose the right foot is to blame in that I don't use it on the brake pedal as much as most people do when approaching on- and off-ramps. And the tires are cheapies - Federal Evoluzione ST1. I've been quite impressed with them performance-wise, but the longevity isn't great. Can't really find them to buy anymore, anyway, so I suppose that doesn't matter.

I picked up their replacements a couple weeks ago - Nokia Wetproof (wtf kind of name is that? ). Only $69/tire on clearance at simpletire.com, free shipping, about $400 out the door after mounting & balancing. Date codes were early/mid 2022, so not too bad. I know Nokian from their winter and all-weather tires (have some Nokian GR4s on my CTS-V for winter right now), didn't really know they made summer tires. It's a reputable brand, and when I checked on a couple of the tire review sites the Wetproof seemed to do quite well in testing by the assorted Euro magazines/websites, so I went for 'em. I'd much rather roll the dice on tires I've never heard of from a respected Euro brand than some similarly-priced crap tires from Westlake or Delinte or one of the other questionable Chinese brands.

We'll see if they're any good in a few months. For now they're mounted & balanced and in the 70deg storage space downstairs.

[Patrick Olsen]

Rolled 264,000 miles on the beater Impreza during a trip to see family.

[Patrick Olsen]

Did some routine maintenance on the beater Impreza in the past week:
- Oil change. Almost a year and about 6500 miles. I wouldn't normally let it go that long, but I had been thinking I was going to pull the engine to fix some oil leaks. I didn't get all the parts on hand before the cold weather came along, so that job had to wait, and that meant the oil change that would've been part of that job never happened. Ah well...

- Replaced both belts. Rock Auto's latest "wholesaler closeout" email had some good Continental belts on the list for about 1/3 off, and my PS belt has been squealing for a little while, so the timing worked out nicely.

- Installed a new coolant overflow bottle that isn't absolutely filthy, so I can actually see the coolant level! Definitely not something I needed to do, but it was another Rock Auto closeout find.


As you can see the new one is a little longer. I hadn't noticed it before, but the old one wasn't the right part - it was too short for the locating nub at the bottom to fit into the support piece that juts out from the fan shroud.

[CamaroFS34]

I posted it for sale.

https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/sho...&postcount=496

[sloppymick]

took my daughters running car and now it wont start.
was doing a tune to try and fix a P0304 misfire. plugs, wires, coil, and injectors changed. initially it started up and idled for a while, but then just quit and now a no crank issue.

now along with the no crank, my obd drops out when key is turned to ON position. what did I do?

[Unabomber]

https://imgur.com/a/F7r94ng JDM mirrors y0

[Patrick Olsen]

^^^^ Ooooohhh, fancy!

I installed the summer wheels/tires on the beater Brighton coupe a few days ago and put the winters back into storage.

[TwinkE]

I got back into a Subaru, picked up a 2014 WRB STi hatch with 57k miles last week. I got it inspected this week and it's running well.




There was a chip in one of the taillights so I swapped back to the stock lights for the inspection. Thursday my P3 gauge came in so I installed that.


Yesterday I started cleaning the engine bay and after the first round I realized I didn't put the handle on my pressure washer hose and my garage was flooding. The hood scoop diverter was a bit floppy and dirty, so after cleaning up the garage flood I picked up some stainless screws. It's still missing a handful of the plastic push pins, so I'll get some more if I can't find some that fit around here.

I also ordered a replacement drivers window switch since the switch for the drivers window sticks down and ordered a replacement drivers vent in case I need it to return to "stock" later. I have a replacement reverse switch to maybe install because the first couple times after putting the stock lights back on the reverse light was a bit flaky, but it seems to be working ok now.

For upgrades, I ordered some Cygnus X1 coilovers and a new head unit since I apparently can't live without CarPlay/android auto. There's also an AOS that I'll hopefully get to installing today.

[TwinkE]

Over the past couple weeks I've replaced the drivers side window switch, swapped the Valenti tail lights back, taped up the loose mess of wires on the hatch for the tails, added a backup camera and the kenwood head unit.

I've been trying to get the leather seats to come back with leatherique, still have more applications.

I'm currently in the middle of removing the stock PPF rock guards, going to get new stuff on then I take it to get tinted.

[Nerdelectric]

I finally did the suspension in my WRX! I installed Tein Flex A coilovers, with Whiteline anti-sway bars (26mm front, set to soft, and 22mm rear set to medium), Whiteline endlinks rear, Perrin end links front, and ISC rear lower control arms. All new OEM hardware too, where applicable.

I left the Teins at fectory preset drop (1.2" F, 1.0" R, nice and subtle) and preload, and got the car aligned back to factory specs. Right now the dampers are front at 7 clicks back from hardest (of 16 clicks), and the rear is 12 clicks back.

She rides great, and what I would call an 'OEM plus" ride. There's also almost zero body roll, there's more compliance in the tires than in the suspension, haha. I'm perfectly happy to daily this.

[Mmontone22]

Today I posted my 2000 Impreza for sale

[Patrick Olsen]

Rolled 266,000 miles on the beater shortly after getting its annual safety check completed. The tech at the service station thinks I have an exhaust leak - he may be right. I've had issues in the past with the gasket rotting away at the joint between the mid-pipe and the axle-back, so I'll check that one of these days.

[Patrick Olsen]

- Started to drive the beater Impreza to CT a couple weeks ago. Made it about 20 minutes into the 7-hour drive and hit some sort of road hazard on the DC Beltway. I saw something in the road, but I thought it was just a bit of broken concrete / a shallow pothole - I didn't see it as a threat I needed to swerve around. Apparently my perception was wrong, because I hit something HARD and the right front immediately went flat. I was able to get to the shoulder quickly and saw the flat tire I expected to see:


To add insult to injury, I discovered my spare was flat (later determined to be a leaky valve stem core), plus I didn't have a wrench to remove the lug nuts! I called my wife to bring me tools and a spare wheel (from my summer set) and was able to pull off the dead one:

Well, damn.

Even before this happened I had already been figuring the winter tires were on their last winter, so having to buy new winter tires wasn't a big deal. But trying to find a single 2.5RS wheel to replace the busted one wasn't going to be easy. I did a little searching around, but the only thing I found was a couple people who wanted to sell me a full set. Having 7 intact wheels is worse than having 3 intact wheels , so I skipped that option and elected to just look for another set of wheels.

In the end, I was able to find a set of 2.5GT "snowflake" wheels with lightly used Blizzak WS90s mounted. They were in PA, only a bit off my normal route from CT back to VA, so swung over and picked them up as I headed back south. Both of my 2.5GTs had these wheels, of course, and my first one was even dark green like the current beater, so it's a nice little throwback:



- In the last week I installed a new head unit, new rear speakers, and a junkyard find OEM underseat subwoofer. I thought I needed a new HU because the left side speakers were no longer working; turned out that was because the front door speaker had a corroded wiring connection, and the rear speaker was actually unplugged (wiring must've been yanked out when the trunk was fully loaded at some point). So, it turned out I didn't need a new HU after all, but I didn't realize that until I installed the new one and both left speakers still didn't work.

In the process of investigating the wiring issue for the rear speaker, I discovered the speaker cones were heavily UV damaged, to the point that one split at even the slightest touch of a fingertip. So I grabbed a new set of speakers for the rear and installed those, fixed the wiring harness for the driver front speaker, routed the T-harness to install the factory under-seat sub, and got everything put back together. Huzzah!

[Charlie-III]

Good to see you posting Patrick.
Sucks about the rim. That won't buff out.

I'm not far off your route, I'm near rt80 & rt287, if you have time, would be nice to meet.
In better weather, and on a weekend, I could take you for a sailplane flight in SE NY (Middletown, NY).

[Black 02]

Adjusted (once again) my Tokico-Ds (+ Swift springs). In my area here in New England, roads range from perfect to demolition derby.