Ok, so I was a little excited about that biege subi - but its not my daily driver, the blue one in the lower pic is. That's my baby, Ruby Scoo - aka the other one as my better half calls it.
This is how she started out:
(will edit this in when I find the photo, thought I had one handy :s)
Back then she was a $500 special, apparently there was something wrong with the rear end that was going to cost a grand to fix. I'm still running on that rear end. After getting her home we found that the headgaskets were dead
No worries, strip it down and replace the headgaskets, get the heads shaved. All good right? Not in this case. The rear cam cover looked like it was melted wax from a burning candle (literallly!). Then we found a cracked cylinder - you can catch your finger nail on it half way down the cylinder, running in parallel to the piston's movements. So I threw that motor away.
I'd heard about an EFI motor that the L series had from factory, so I tracked that down and got one. After getting an EFI EA82 and a computer my steep learning curve began. I needed to get a wiring loom to connect the two, a MAF sensor, o2 sensor and matching exhaust for the o2 sensor to fit in. Bonus of running the EFI motor was the addition of a tacho to the dash, a much better looking dash IMO.
^ After working on her slowly for about a year I finally got her on the road, put some rims on her, added my spotties and my stereo and left it at that for the time being. While nothing but learning how to 4wd in Ruby Scoo was happening, I was behind the scenes rebuilding an MPFI. Nothing serious, just new bearings, shave heads, 40 thou oversized pistons and a general freshen up of the motor. Once that went in she ran very nicely - constantly pulling 10L/100km or better.
My brother and I then went to perth about 9 months after the rebuild. Ruby Scoo missed one beat due to my tinkering. Solid lifters don't work on the MPFI's very well, and one of them broke about 2-3hrs from Ceduna. A 12 hour stop (sleep included) saw our problems sorted with the original hydrolic lifters re-fitted. At this stage our fuel pump was starting to give up, had to hit it to get it going
^ Bros cleaning parts that I'd left out for him after I finished stripping the motor down to the heads at 2am.
Anyway, we/I had a great time over in WA for our almost two week tour. We went over to have a bbq with some other subi nuts. 40 cars rocked up! Crazy good times had! The fuel pump died a horrible death. Got that sorted then headed home.
^ The turn out for the cruise/bbq!
On the way home we didn't stop in extreme temps and blew out the side of the radiator, thus killing my newly rebuild motor.
^ The tow home. I can't talk high enough about RACV total care!
I threw in a spare carbed EA82 that ran badly at the best. That
stayed for about 18-20 months before I got my act sorted for an EJ conversion that can be followed in the above link.
Now with the EJ and some other work she looks like this:
Still got a fair bit of work to be done to get her exactly where I want her. Now after going out the other weekend (trip report still coming) and seeing Owen's lifted liberty (sadly no longer) I've got evil plans of a lifted impreza with H6
Sadly I've got to stick with the current project for a little while longer! Should be good once everything is sorted.
Cheers
Bennie
PS: hope the pics are working, half don't show up for me
Can't wait but need some parts, hence why I'm not working on them now...
Awesome and a pleasure to watch.
tastic
Excellent.:ebiggrin: