Bagging my 07 Impreza 2.5i Wagon

[yoffer]

Looks awesome man! Great build!

[_Dirty_]

at the moment no, again could be anytime from 12 until 3pm. I'snt everyone heading down on wed? or are you referring to Bret? But either way I would like to be down there earlier as well so no worries. Let me know what you end up doing.

[johnrocs]

Gary - I'm thinking about crusin' on Thursday with a crew of people, then crashing at Rali's house in Jersey for the night, then doing the last leg of the journey on Friday. I really want to be there earlier than later on Friday, do you know what time you're leaving on Friday?

Taylor - Looking forward to getting some shots taken man!

D&W - Friends are amazing! Things definitely went way faster, it also helped a lot having Kevin's Impreza already bagged, knowing the difficulties presented in the various stages of that process etc.

[D&W]

so sick!! looks amazing. pretty awesome you were able to do all the work yourself with buddies help!

[tstacks]

looks fresh John. 4REAL

[_Dirty_]

I know whats so TOP SECERT!!! and do you still plan on rolling down with me on Friday? We need to plan this out if so.

[johnrocs]

you do good work son! REAL CLEAN SETUP

Thanks a lot!

[Bystrov]

you do good work son! REAL CLEAN SETUP

[johnrocs]

Alrighty, this post is gonna be yummy!

Day 8 - Sensor Arm + Stancing Sunday

With the fenders rolled, I immediately slammed my new wheels on and tested out some fitment. Not bad, but needs moar camber!


I bought H&R Camber bolts for the rear (the front has plates and an OEM bolt, the rear has no plates and the bolt doesn't camber nearly enough) which are pretty dope. Unfortunately, the bottom bolt was about 3/4" too long (it was hitting my cv boot) so I lopped off the end of the bolt and about 1.5mm off the spacer. Now the bolts fit with about a credit cards width to spare. The extra camber was well worth the effort You'll see the results further down the post.

Figuring out a good spot for the sensor arms was a bit tricky. I had already adjusted camber so I really didn't want to take out my struts. This seemingly pointless metal flap was blocking a really nice spot, so I did the only logical solution and cut it a bit then smashed it a lot with a hammer. Here is a shot before I started smashing - I planned on cutting the metal from the right, so I had folded it a little, but then decided smashing would be easier (and funner).


One rear sensor arm DONE! The nut is tack welded to the control arm with a bit of wiggle room even in monster truck mode. Those sensor arms are expensive, so I took my time to ensure I wouldn't max them out.


The driver side was done just like the passenger in the rear... cut, smash, drill, mount, weld!


The sensor arm lines went right along with the rear air lines.


I then cut the extra slack from the wires and crimped everything back together. If you'll be at h2o you may get a chance to see what's so 'top secret'


Put everything back in the tubing, clean!


Here is how the front sensor arm lines are positioned. We put some spacers so the arm won't rub on the ABS line.


I decided to jack up the front wheel as far as it would go, you can see I've still got a lot of potential for slammage! My wheel is hitting on the wheel well, I need to get some tubbing done which I'm hoping can happen before h2o.


Here's how it sits now, I'm pretty happy with it!


A few more shots I took at the shop...


I'm happy with the camber in the back


The driver side...


This morning I took a few shots in the parking lot... The front will go lower as soon as I can get the tubbing done.


I'm hoping to lay frame in the front once the tubbing is done, and I still have some room in the back to tuck some wheel if I cambered the rear a little more, and I should have camber plates for the rear in a couple weeks. I'm undecided at this point, I really like the fitment. Opinions? Here's one last shot


Thanks for all the support everyone! This has been a TON of fun, and I'm quite happy with the results. I should have some pictures taken with a nice camera in the next couple of days (all these pictures were taken with my Droid) and I'll be sure to post them up. I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend - fall is quickly setting in here in VT and the scenery is beautiful. If you'll be at H2O this weekend I'll see you there!

-- John Hall

Thank You...
Bag Riders
Will Fisher
Rali Kepchar
Kevin McGovern (SubieRuby)
Taylor Menezes (tstacks)
Cyrus House
Bret Hudson

[johnrocs]

I'll be separating these days into different posts for organizational purposes, so here is Saturday.

Day 7 - Strut Saturday

Finally, the day had come to install the struts. We got to the shop early and got right at the install. Here is a shot of the rear strut sitting on Kevin's table... with Kevin uhh... in the picture....


I picked up these grommets from ACE, they're a perfect size to run both air line and sensor arm line through. Here I was testing out some positioning before drilling holes.


I drilled out the holes for the grommets and slammed them in there, but they were a little on the loose side...


I decided to put some duct tape around the edges to help make a tighter seal. This was then reinforced with some silicone.


Now the grommets sit in there nice and tight, so I ran some air line out for the rears.


Here's what I was talking about with the sensor arm lines. This tubing can house the air line and sensor arm lines.


We didn't have any fittings that threaded into the D2 struts, so we had to use the fittings they came with which were 1/4" airline. We downsized the airline coming out of the manifold in an easy to reach location in case I end up re-running air line at some point.


Meanwhile, the air lines and sensor arm lines came through that grommet in the firewall without a problem. The clips on the sensor arm lines didn't even have to be cut off!


Big thanks to my friend Taylor for coming by and providing an extra set of hands during the install, here he is working away at one of the rear struts.



The rear struts came out without too much hassle, here we are ready for slap in the new air struts!


Here is one strut installed in the rear with airline all connected.


The airline routing in the rear was quick and easy. The sensor arm lines follow the same path.


With the rear done, we moved onto the front. Here's a shot of the OEM strut before we took it out. Kevin has been on the lookout for a winter beater Suby, so we saved my old struts to put in whatever Suby he picks up. They only have about 40k miles on them, which will probably be about 100k less than whatever he ends up buying. Thanks for all the help buddy <3


The front struts had been taken out a couple days before this in order to get a frame notch done, so they came out with ease. Here's one of the new fronts ready to be put in!


A closer shot of that frame notch and a lighter for reference. There is some good potential for low here!


Front struts are in!


The air line downsize happens in the engine bay for the front. Whenever I have to take out my front struts to coil them down or adjust camber or anything I have to snip the air line as it's a compression fitting. This only means cutting off a minuscule amount of airline, but eventually I will run out of slack and have to re-run air line. Having the conversion happen in the engine bay will make my life a whole lot easier - turning a an hour to two hour task into a 30 min task.


With airline connected, we were ready to test out the slamability of the struts.


The fender roller was nowhere to be found and I really didn't want to baseball bat / mallet my fenders, so I decided against putting on my new wheels. Luckily a friend only an hour and a half away had a nice eastwood fender roller so I headed out to roll the fenders. Here is what the car looked like bagged on OEM wheels. You can see Kevin's Suby is hiding behind mind


Saturday was incredibly productive! Without the fenders rolled and new wheels on, we couldn't be sure of the min/max height so we didn't mount the sensor arms. We left that for Sunday, which I'll cover in the next post.

[tstacks]

As we were running out of time for the night, we decided to coil up the cables and air line and leave them in the cabin under the passenger side floor mats. Here's Taylor zip-tying everything together temporarily.

I have tits...

[johnrocs]

Alright, here comes a few posts with what was done this weekend I'm starting with Friday night, which was only a few hours of mods after work before hitting the town for the evening.

Day 6 - A Few Hours of Air Line

We decided to get the front air lines and sensor arm lines run as those were going to take the longest. I couldn't find a good path underneath the car, so I decided to run both air lines and sensor arm lines through the passenger side paneling. Here I've ripped out some paneling and styrofoam and got one air line and sensor arm line out.


The lines then go under the seat and tuck under the paneling as shown here... There was plenty of room for both air lines and both sensor arm lines, it just took a little cramming


As we were running out of time for the night, we decided to coil up the cables and air line and leave them in the cabin under the passenger side floor mats. Here's Taylor zip-tying everything together temporarily.


With the paneling back in, you can see how everything fit in there nicely, and we left it ready to go through the firewall.


This here OEM grommet will make for a perfect entry point into the engine bay. It is easily accessible from the passenger side just behind the glove compartment.


I decided to use some tubing to cover up my lines and keep things clean. I know I'll have to cut and re-crimp the sensor arm lines for the rear and don't want an ugly mass of electrical tape showing.


With all the paneling back in, everything was back to looking neat and tidy before we called it an evening. We left the shop Friday night very ready for a solid Saturday of modding!

[johnrocs]

I have a question about the drain line from the bottom of the tank. How do you "activate" it? It just looks like a 90* fitting with a line running out. I'm trying to figure out a solution for mine, and yours looks like it might fit the bill. Can you elaborate on this?

I ran the line out through the grommet and put a drain cock on it, but the drain cock was leaking air so I ended up just putting a hex plug on it. When I want to drain out, I just have to unscrew the hex and then re-thread it. Kind of a hassle, but its clean and I shouldn't have to drain my tank very often with a water trap between the compressor and tank. A drain cock really would have been ideal, but I tried a second after the first was leaking and had the same issue. I'll probably drain the tank no more than once every few months, so I'm not too bummed.

Got a --ton-- of work done this weekend, I'm uploading pictures now and will have a new post up within the hour!

[Fastphil]

I have a question about the drain line from the bottom of the tank. How do you "activate" it? It just looks like a 90* fitting with a line running out. I'm trying to figure out a solution for mine, and yours looks like it might fit the bill. Can you elaborate on this?

[D&W]

looking good